ByXXXXXXXXXX
ByMARK FRARY
WIDER ISSUES The designation of 2017 as the UN’s Inter- national Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development has also focused attention on not just environmental impact but wider sustainability issues. As a result of the better tools and more
pressure from both governments and stake- holders, sustainability is appearing more frequently in RFPs. Some suppliers feel that these sustainability questions are just a fig- leaf to cover buyers’ need to address the issue for their paymasters. Yet a GBTA spokesman says: “It’s not just a
tick box anymore – companies are looking for robust data. It’s worth taking a closer look at RFPs to understand how CSR data is weighted within their organisation. He adds: “It is true there can be a weak
moving forward. From this there were many hotel companies that concluded that sustainability isn’t just about a com- pany’s environmental impact – it’s much broader. Companies that run responsible businesses understand there is a clear business case for doing the right thing by stakeholders and the planet.” He argues that stakeholders in the hotel
sector are no longer happy to settle for ‘green- washing’, and that true sustainability can earn customer loyalty. For those companies that did push their environmental impact down the corporate agenda, there are some factors making it more pressing now. In the UK at least, this has partly been inspired by legislation in 2013, which requires quoted companies to report on their carbon emissions, including those as a result of business travel. The EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive,
which came into force this year, also estab- lishes new mandatory environmental, social and governance reporting requirements for organisations with more than 500 employees. It is not just the activities of the companies that are under the microscope; the environ- mental footprint of the supply chain is also covered by the legislation.
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link in the process. This often sits with the hotel sales team who are unsure how to manage these questions during the RFP process, and this leaves a disconnect. Hotel managers should ensure their sales team know how to manage questions relating to CO2, CSR and sustainability, and how to source the correct data needed by the corporate travel buyers.” He cites the non-profit charity CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, which works with corporations to disclose greenhouse gas emissions. Its Global
“We take sustainability into consideration
when our RFPs are issued, and we prefer sus- tainable suppliers. Our travellers also like to choose more sustainable suppliers when they have the opportunity to do so.” Torppa says that suppliers may feel sus- tainability questions add to the complexity of responding to RFPs. “I do feel the frustration of suppliers when RFPs include sustainabil- ity questions that seem to be added just to perform a ‘tick-box’ exercise without making any real difference,” she says. She believes that large-scale sustainability initiatives in business travel have never taken off, but there have been a small number of comprehensive programmes within compa- nies in a few countries – notably Scandinavia, Germany, the US and the UK. Sustainability always tends to take a back
seat, she believes. “If it’s not the economic crisis then it is something else. For example, organisations are now more concerned about safety and security issues as we experience terrorist attacks in Europe. The other issue taking precedence is the new EU Data Protec- tion Regulation and what organisations need to do to adopt it.” She adds: “Change is happening so slowly.
If organisations felt pressure from their customers demanding more sustainable services and products, they would change their ways.”
“Stakeholders in the hotel sector are no longer happy to settle for ‘green-washing’”
Supply Chain 2017 report states: “The 89 members of CDP’s supply chain programme, which includes BMW, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, KPMG UK and Hewlett-Packard, have a combined spend of US$2.7 trillion. They are using this power to engage suppliers and asking them to disclose environmental data. This data shows disclosing companies have reduced their CO2 emissions by 434 million tonnes this year, which is more than France’s annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.” Minna Torppa, travel manager at the Min-
istry of Defence in Finland, also says sustain- ability is more than a tick-box exercise. “For my organisation, sustainability is important and we keep a track on our environmental footprint and our employees’ wellbeing. Safety and security always come first.”
Those travel buyers who are including sustainability in their RFPs are doing it with the best intention but there are challenges. “Sustainability issues are not easy to follow. There’s a huge amount of information, and sometimes the facts are hard to un- derstand – it’s not always easy to know if your actions are good or bad,” says Torppa.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE Where sustainability questions in RFPs do exist, they are becoming more complex and cover a wider range of areas, including groups and meetings. This has led to the growth of different tools to help hoteliers report on their activities, such as the Con- Serve data management system, which gen- erates CO2 reports at the click of button and is aligned to the World Travel and Tourism
BBT May/June 2017 35
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