Discover how we can rebuild sustainable tourism together.

[Music] welcome everyone and thank you for joining us on this session my name is marianne and i am responsible for sustainability at booking holdings and today we're going to talk about the future of travel and the future of sustainable travel in that particular case and as you might have heard during earlier sessions we are very much committed to make sustainable travel easier for everyone why because it's our company mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world but we very much understand that we have a shared responsibility to make sure there's a world worth experiencing as well and while travel is currently at pause the desire to travel has not been distinguished and one day hopefully soon we will see travel and tourism return but we have to ask ourselves what kind of travel industry do we want to return to and while this remains a challenging time for our industry there's also an opportunity we can rebuild a more sustainable travel industry together and this cannot be achieved by individual actress but it must be a collective movement at booking.com we've identified the first steps in this movement making it easier for partners to share their sustainability information with customers and hundreds of thousands of you have already shared this information with us and at the end of the panel we'll show you how you can do that too today i'm joined with three amazing guests um that represents a key part of the story we have uh nico joining us today anika general manager of hotel jakarta in amsterdam welcome nico thank you for being here we have baya here today and baya's head of sustainability of the core business at booking.com and we have elena here today and elena is a research and analyst specialist at booking.com and very much deep into what consumers want around sustainable travel did i say that correctly yep that's right perfect i want to start with you elena because that's the one thing we all want to know how do consumers feel about sustainable travel what was their attitudes in general but also what have we seen in the past year did that change yeah well we know from from research that we run every single year actually around sustainable travel particularly that um people do consider uh sustainable travel to be a very important topic and people do have very favorable attitudes towards it they believe that you know travelers should act now and sort of save the planet for future generations these are all things that are already uh yeah existent but what we've seen in the last year is that there's definitely been a change as well in uh sort of the more um yeah people have become a little bit more serious about sustainability because obviously it's been a very strange year and there's been a lot more importance given to sustainability there's been a lot more news coverage for instance around uh sort of the positive impact that national lockdowns and travel bans have had on the environment and this has just brought sustainability top of mind to people um and then later on we start talking more about uh supporting local businesses again this is uh related to sustainability and um what we actually found out through a research that we ran back in july is that for 53 percent of travelers this actually has caused them to want to travel more sustainably specifically because the pandemic has really opened their eyes to actually uh becoming more sustainable yeah that is really good to hear and i think very chosen opportunity definitely for us but in all honesty we haven't seen a massive amount of consumer demand for sustainable properties what is causing that yeah there is uh you're right i mean there's a huge divide or a huge gap still between sort of that positive attitude people have towards sustainable travel and the actual behaviors that they're engaging in and through our research we know a few of the most important barriers that are sort of withholding people from being as sustainable as they ideally would like to be so first of all the most important barrier that we found and this is across the world basically is that people feel there's not enough sustainable options available to them and then very closely related to this and also a very important barrier is that people feel they don't know how or where to find these sustainable options now i say they're very closely related because the only difference really if you look at it closely is about where you sort of place the responsibility if you place a responsibility with yourself then you're going to say i don't know how to find it but if you place a responsibility externally then it's more about there's not enough available i mean the likelihood of all of these people who say there's nothing available having actually actively researched sustainable options is very small so yeah they're very closely related and of course uh it's going to take the entire travel industry to work together to both make sustainable options more findable and more available it's not something that one player can do on their own and yeah there are other barriers too unfortunately so we can't just expect that if we make it more easy to find and more readily available to people that this is going to completely change everything for instance knowledge is still a pretty big issue um right now we see there are definitely varying levels of knowledge around sustainability in general but mostly what we see is that consumers actually tend to relate it to the environment more than any other practices so for example the socio-economic factors taken in sustainability they don't recognize exactly yeah that's not that's not something that's top of mind for them and it makes sense also i mean it's not talked about a lot in uh in the news for instance it's also i mean especially in europe for instance even in schools their kids are taught about sustainability but it's about recycling and it's about airplanes causing lots of co2 emissions so these things are the things people know about but yeah we should really sort of focus our attention also to educate consumers about all the other aspects of sustainable travel and last but not least there is uh still some issues related to price perception unfortunately what we see in other sectors or yeah businesses we see that um the sustainable alternative is usually more expensive than the regular uh product and people take this also to travel they think that just because uh something is sustainable it's going to be more expensive as well and that of course doesn't have to be true when we know this but as long as there is this divide between a sustainable option and a non-sustainable option people will have this feeling of a sustainable option being more expensive so i would say the way to overcome this barrier is to actually sort of normalize uh sustainable options to make sure that there are actually plenty of sustainable options so people don't view it as an alternative but rather the norm then we should also expect them to stop thinking that it's going to be more expensive that's that's a clear statement that needs that sustainable travel needs to be the mainstream they are understanding that this all starts with partners actually implementing these sustainable practices what do you see looking at it from a partner perspective so from a partner perspective i would say it depends on which partners you look at if you look at partners that already have sustainable practices in place or are more advanced into their sustainability journey the main barrier if you look at the platform like ours is the lack of yeah the platform to actually communicate those practices so until recently we have not offered the opportunity to accommodations to actually talk about it so that would be the first barrier for them how can i tell my story to customers about what i'm doing the second thing that we see happening also with partners that have accommodations that have sustainable practices in place is that they suffer from what is called green housing which is a fear like refraining themselves from communicating about what sustainable practices they have in place because they lack of confidence on how to craft the message or they feel that people will think that they are being patronizing and basically they prefer to say nothing instead if you look on the other hand at partners that have little or no sustainable practices in place everything starts by understanding the why so why should i invest on this topic uh what is in for me um yeah our customer i'm going to get more customers am i going to reduce costs do i care about making a positive impact which is also possible the second barrier for these type of partners is about a lack of understanding of where the impact lies so what type of practices should i prioritize where do i start and last but not least if they've already made the decision that they want to implement some of these practices they feel that they are not equipped with the right knowledge or tools to actually take those steps well nico i think you are one of the people that actually overcame all of these barriers because your hotel is one of the front runners on sustainability in amsterdam it is so you've been through all of this yeah um what have been what has been your challenge on on to implement this and what what's been your success most of all i first explained how we became so sustainable yeah uh we were competing in a contest to to to build a hotel on this beautiful spot in in river i in amsterdam and one of the requirements for the municipality was that it's one of the things it should be very sustainable so we said well let's win this competition and let's be as sustainable as possible so we took it from scratch and we made it one of our main topics and we looked at it as a different shader how can we differentiate ourselves and how can we be more attractive to to hotel guests and i prefer to book with us instead of booking another less sustainable property so we said well let's be as sustainable as possible and let's let it be let let it go hand in hand with guest comfort so we saw it as an added value so we implemented an awful lot we implemented solar panels we were using electricity costs by doing that we have a thermal heating storage below the ground 110 meters and 160 meters to to to heat up and to cool our building we have uh collect rainwater to water our beautiful inner garden we have uh floor heating and floor cooling so we implement it a lot and we see actually that guests experience our property not only as a very environmental friendly environment but also as a beautiful property where you have fun and where you can where you can relax and where you experience really good guest comfort and that's that's very nice to experience that so we we are we're very successful and we see that we are different than other ones and we listen to i guess and they say the same yeah so actually the opposite of what they lean here describes as the guest feels that they that will get less if they choose a sustainable option in your hotel they actually get more they get more yeah it's it's it's it's adding value to the guest comfort and and as soon as you exp you you achieve that then then it's an added value for not only for the guests but also for uh for the hotelier and the owner and for the industry as a whole what do you think an ota or the wider industry can do to make it easier for properties to make those sustainable choices you obviously have to come into amsterdam pushing you a little bit on that what would be the notch coming from the industry for other properties no it has to be in in your dna as well as as a travel industry we have to tell ourselves that we we we wanted to pass this planet on to the next generation uh so it has to be part of your own dna and i think it's very good that a municipality puts in it is a requirement to when you when you build a place and even when you get a permit to renovate your place and i think also booking.com plays a big role in having this this practice available for property on your website it and and and maybe use it as a filter that that people can filter to see these properties and and maybe incentive these properties by lowering their commission uh or in another way to to to support uh auto years to be more sustainable and also to forget to book a more sustainable hotel um yeah so you're saying make it a requirement provide incentives and definitely make it visible definitely yes so that would be a start on what sort of as a shared industry we could be doing yeah but how does booking see this so i think as a marketplace where we are putting together supply and demand so we are connecting guests with accommodations we have a unique opportunity to create what we call the sustainable travel flywheel so we believe that if we offer the opportunity to accommodations to actually communicate their sustainable practices so that customers can find them so we overcome that barrier for customers then customers will be inspired to make more sustainable choices which in the end will help them to capture additional demand and in return that will encourage more and more accommodations to actually invest on sustainable practices so communicating about sustainability on our website actually creating that big amount of sustainable supply that elena is so much looking for and then hoping that the that the demand for that sustainable supply we see a pickup in there and start to get that flywheel going elena if you hear this then you know the implementing the sustainable practices we start to communicate about this what do you what do you think what's the response we could expect from consumers well based on research we already know that the the response to be expected is very positive um we basically already know through our research that uh three and four or almost three and four uh people would actually be more likely to choose an accommodation if they knew that it was implementing sustainable practices and this is regardless of if they were looking for a sustainable property or not it's just that added benefit it really doesn't do any harm so this in combination with the fact that we already know that people's attitudes are very positive and that people do consider it important um leads us to believe that yeah it is very um that responses should be very positive and besides this we also know uh that some guests actually get very uh frustrated or annoyed when a property sort of uh withholds them or limits their uh the sustainable practices that they as guests can actually perform if someone in their daily lives is very rigorous in always recycling for instance but there's no recycling bin available in the hotel that can actually cause friction and yeah it does cause annoyance so in in the end i would expect mostly positive responses from guests so nico you you had these responses from guests you don't put it up in front on your website as an advertising with it but of course i can imagine that the guest sees a lot of it what are the responses that you get they they they love it you know it's it's uh uh we don't want to set we don't want to bother him too much with the with our the melee checking we say we are so sustainable we want we want to exp that they experience it that they feel it and that they feel the difference and we only explain when they ask for it and we have all information available they can collect it whenever they want and whatever way they want a website paper we have a very nice booklet an in-house booklet for guests where they can see what we all do but we only give them or explain them when as soon as they ask and we of course we ask them if they want to know something about it but in a not in a very frustrating way you know it's just it's just part of our guest experience and and we actually see that they that that they actually see and feel and experience that it adds value and and that's our aim because we are there to to to give our hotel guests a specific experience and a very nice experience um i can be very honest here the only complaint we had recently or last summer was when we had 40 degrees centigrade in i think a week in august we have some difficulties with our floor cooling to cool down the hotel room especially when people open their window because people are always when they enter a room the first thing they do is they open a window because they want fresh air as soon as that hot air comes in the reaction time of our floor cooling it takes more time than a traditional air conditioning to cool down their room again so there comes a complaint that it's too warm to sleep in but as soon as we explain how it works why we have this in place they they embrace it and they say well that's that's nice if i save the planet with this then then it's good to to close this door and uh to be uh as a sustainable guest as well yeah so if the total guest experience is right and you can explain why certain measures are being taken yeah then the guests continue to stay positive in their experience even though the sustainable option might be a little bit more difficult for them so in in this case the only difficult thing is is is the the the cooling of the floor we when we shoot build this property again we should implement also a sort of a little cooling system to to to uh to cool the air which comes into the room as well but but other than that we do it exactly the same perfect well they are hearing all of this i think bookingshot.com has some good plans on actually helping properties uh making all their sustainability efforts visible to guests um how what are what are our plans uh with this how do we scale this how do we make it visible to consumers what can you expect from booking yeah so there are uh different things that we are doing on the one hand we want to reward and acknowledge the efforts of those partners that have gone above and beyond already and that are farther ahead on their sustainability journey like nico for example so we want to give visibility to the certifications that they have so independent certifications we are collecting that from the certification bodies directly gstc certifications green tourism and eu eu eco label so that information is currently visible on the hotel page but we also want to make sure that we are making this accessible to all accommodations because we believe every big journey starts with small steps so we want everyone to start by putting even small or bigger things in place and communicating about that so we have created a landing page on the extranet where accommodations can update their sustainability information and we are displaying this information on the hotel page to guest and in the future we will be looking in the near future on how can we make it easier for guests not only once they are on the hotel page to see what the hotel is doing but also to identify those properties earlier on when they are starting to search for an accommodation so that's one thing and for those that don't know where to start we've created also a sustainability handbook in collaboration with different experts on different topics with simple steps that can inspire partners and help them to start on their sustainable um yeah journey amazing that's uh that sounds like we're uh sort of solving a lot of the barriers that were discussed here at least in the first steps and the first interests so it's very interesting to see where this will take us elena dream away in 10 years time we will look for ahead in the travel industry we hope that travel has returned at least to to a normal level and um what does that look like a sustainable travel industry um well i just hope that uh in 10 years time that we can make sustainable travel the norm i just want to make sure you know being a consumer researcher i want to make sure that we take away any kind of friction that consumers are currently facing i want to make it easy for them so in that sense i want yeah i want the sustainable options to be the norm so that people don't have to go out and actively look for them but actually select them without even having to think about it yeah but that's quite a call-out payout and if that's the dream then our partners definitely need to do all the work what do you dream to you to offer to be able to offer to our partners in order to create that that industry so i think yeah we definitely need to help partners so i think one of the things that we can help partners with is actually proven that customers value this topic because it will be a way to help them prioritize of course looking into different type of incentives and making sure that we are basically learning because we will get many things wrong along the way so one of the things that we are looking forward to do is of course learning what things don't work and share it with the industry so that we can learn together and hopefully is not only something that happens at booking but that happens beyond booking and others are also taking the same steps because then it will be much easier to actually drive change if it's something that you see everywhere exactly but being that unifier that that it's simple and easy to understand not only for partners but also for consumers whatever they see on any type of website that they go to they see this thing yeah thing exactly exactly and then niko for you i feel you you are already the front runner on this is there still stuff that you dream about no we want to be we want to stay front runner no i i also hope i deeply hope that that sustainable travel will be the norm in 10 years why because we have to pass on this planet to next generations of course you want to be frontrunner and i do a lot of show rounds in my property not only for hotel guests or people from the neighborhood who would like to see our beautiful property but also for hoteliers from all over the world architects who come to us to see and experience what we did and that shows that a lot of hoteliers investors and architects are very interested in the way we have built this property and that's very nice to see and we invest a lot of time to to do so and that's great to experience and i honestly think and that that will be the norm in in in constructing hotels and how to run hotels because it's it's cost saving it adds value uh and at the end it may you make more money with it and it's it's good for the environment so plus plus plus you know only wins to to to to have uh we as a company will uh certainly will take this a step further um there are many other measurements we can take into place like reuse shower water uh or do other things even better than we do now so we will certainly look at the future by investing in this in this way of building and constructing hotels and run hotels in years so so that's that's my dream and i think we're gonna make this dream come true amazing i hope the same and i love to hear more also in the future about your learnings and especially the new innovations that you implement in your tell it's also good to hear that you continue to to have stuff to dream about it's it's not a journey that has a proper endpoint it is definitely a journey that keeps evolving because the innovations also keep popping up also for ubia you must also take those continuously into account into showing your sustainable practices you have to up keep your sustainable practices definitely i think what we have in place today will evolve also as time passes so i think that's that's a good summary of the session in general there's lots of opportunities but it is a journey and then there's an ever evolving journey that we're on and i i do feel that we're on the early steps of this journey together um there are many things that we can do but it's definitely a journey that we must all take together as as everybody here uh pointed to because it's not one thing that a property can do it's something that also a consumer movement needs to follow and there are innovations that need to be set for everyone else to start raising the bar together if you have a sustainable practice at your property go to the extranet and update your information it's easy to do and you will help to begin to build a collection of sustainable properties for our guests so that movement of creating that massive amount of sustainable supply that elena is looking for so much that can start today if you have yet to implement any practices and you don't know where to start we have as baya pointed out the sustainability handbook available for you and we're looking forward to working with you to make sustainable travel easier for everyone thank you all [Music]

2021-08-12 13:55

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