Panel 2-Technology for inclusive tourism
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This document discusses inclusive tourism and sustainability. It outlines 4+1 things to remember for inclusive tourism: positive impact, environment, economy, skills and employment, and human and equal rights. It also discusses using technology to reduce plastic waste from amenities and food waste, caring for communities through water stewardship, and building skills and innovation in communities. The document is from January 2020 and focuses on the responsible business practices of IHG hotels.
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Panel 2-Technology for inclusive tourism
- 1. Technology for Inclusive Tourism The Responsible Business Story January 2020
- 2. Inclusive Tourism: 4+1 things to remember The Responsible Business Lens Positive Impact Environment The Climate Crisis Economy Skills and Employment People Human and Equal Rights Crisis Support in disasters Inclusive Tourism
- 3. The Boring (but necessary) Stuff: Targets
- 4. © 2016 IHG 20 January 2020 Private and confidential Environment and Product Technology: Plastics Eliminating all bulk amenities Helping reduce plastic waste all bulk amenities
- 5. © 2016 IHG 20 January 2020 Private and confidential Technology to Reduce Food waste
- 6. © 2016 IHG 20 January 2020 Private and confidential Caring for Communities: Water stewardship
- 7. © 2016 IHG 20 January 2020 Private and confidential Skills & Innovation for communities
- 8. © 2016 IHG 20 January 2020 Private and confidential Thank You Questions Alkis Tsikardonis Alkis.Tsikardonis@ihg.com
Editor's Notes
- Inclusive Tourism – what is the responsible business story? With hotels in local communities all over the world, IHG touches the lives of millions of people. We are in a unique position to do this. Our guests are looking at us as a global business – as operators – and as destinations, saying “how are you delivering in terms of sustainability? How are you doing business responsibly? What role are you playing?”. As such businesses we need to step up more than ever.
- To make things simple – if you want to apply the responsible business lens to inclusive tourism you need to make a positive impact on 4 key areas through your operations. Our planet - destinations suffer from climate crisis. At destination level, it is a socioeconomic risk driven by environmental factors. The local economy – make sure local economies flourish for the long term through skills, opportunity and capability building. The people – respect local populations, their way of life and priorities. Businesses are visitors, not hosts in each community. Survival – be there when you are most needed. It is quite obvious that technology plays a pivotal role in doing so.
- We need targets to avoid greenwashing. Simple as that, otherwise we would be telling stories… These targets are a translation of what positive impact means for our business. These were issued in 2017-18 when the world was very different – they are nowhere close to enough now. If we have some time I can explain how we are working for post-2020 targets. Do you see technology opportunities in order for us to achieve these?
- We recently committed to remove all plastic bottles from our rooms, effectively 200million small bottles a year! We will be replacing miniature bathroom toiletries with bulk-size solutions across our global estate. We are very proud that the pledge made us the first global hotel company to commit to all brands to removing bathroom miniatures in favour of bulk-size amenities. Marriott and Hyatt have since followed and hope that others will as well. We also made a plastic straws commitment in 2018, a change that is now complete as no IHG hotel will be buying any of these in 2020. Would we have made the commitment if product technology had not allowed us to come up with alternatives? Also we’re always looking at ways to roll out new innovations and leverage technology – we are working from a virtual ‘sustainable hotel room’ concept which is a Wishlist of all the solutions new technology can add to a hotel room. Examples: Working with a supplier, Trendsetter, we are able to source duvets and pillows with filling that is made from recycled plastic bottles, diverting on average 150 plastic bottles from landfill for each room. Since we started this project, more than half a million bottles have been used to create products in our hotel rooms. And in several of our hotels across Europe, we’re working with a supplier called Ege who make carpets using a yarn made from recycled plastic bottles and old fishing nets
- Another area we want to tackle trough technology is food waste. We can all picture the amount of food that gets wasted every day in hotels. Our efforts are focused on a few areas, from rationalisation of food procurement, to measurement of waste and to recycling of food where we cannot avoid creating food waste. We are using Winnow, an AI based technology to minimise food waste and rationalise procurement. You will be amazed how much we are spending on food that we throw away! We are also working with Too Good To Go, an app that does the same and is very popular in Europe! We are also working with OzHarvest in Australia, an organisation which picks up excess food and distributes to local charities through an App. Here is an example of how technology cannot only help, in real business terms- one hotel already benefitting from using Winnow, is InterContinental® Fujairah Resort, UAE. In just six months, the resort has been able to reduce food waste by more than 50%. Now think about how much this food waste costed (imagine a 5 star hotel, with world class restaurants and thousands of guests) when we bought it in the first place to get a picture of savings and the win-win situation this is!
- On water stewardship, here is an example of a project we are working on in India. As you may know, India is a country facing ‘water stress’ in many areas, so this is a call for us to make the most of this resource – our water saving technology is such countries (facing water stress - i.e. Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Bali) are enhanced as a priority. This is includes from rainwater to atmosphere humidity collection mechanisms to shower heads, to new sanitation technologies etc. Following detailed assessment of the catchment the following actions have been taken: 12 workshops 40-50 people at each to learn about WASH stakeholder working group created innovations identified Next steps is to take those innovations from our hotels to the community to make a difference.
- Let’s take a minute to talk about skills, youth empowerment and how innovation can help us get there. We have recently partnered with JA Worldwide, on of the biggest youth empowerment charities in the world JA Worldwide prepares young people for employment and entrepreneurship by delivering hands on, experiential learning in work readiness, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship. In the next 3 moths, we will be running the JA Innovation challenge where we will work with young people from local communities over 5 days to The JA partnership is supplementary to long term programmes we have been running at IHG, such as our IHG Academy, our award winning Change 100 programme and our Early Careers approach.