Business management & development
it will soon be the first company in Italy to produce electricity on an industrial basis using hydrogen power plants. The question now is whether other brands are as willing to invest in sustainable design and, if so, what they should invest in. Federico Toresi, global vice-president of design for luxury and premium brands at Accor, observed that two challenging years of the pandemic have provided an excellent opportunity for brands to reconsider what luxury means in today’s market. “We think luxury is really about time and space, and how we can develop that in an experiential way,” he remarked. “We looked at our brands to see what really matters to our guests through an in-depth analysis of what we do when we go on holiday, or what we do now when we work. Longer travel stays are becoming more frequent, because of Covid [and] the fact that we can travel less, or we have less money to do so,” Toresi explained. “The whole idea has really been to become all- inclusive, which means looking at how guests enjoy their stay and then each of our 43 brands would interpret that guest journey,” he said. Accor is building on a heritage of sustainability,
on which its Fairmont brand is heavily focused. For instance, it is one of the first brands to put art installations in the sea that can generate coral and put recycling facilities in the guest rooms 25 years ago. In recent years, Accor has tried to differentiate its ultimate luxury brand Raffles. For this, it came up with the ‘Design for Harmony’ approach, which focuses on well-being and applies feng shui and biophilic principles to create peaceful sanctuaries. “Sustainability has been part of the thinking in
everything that we do,” added Toresi. “Everything we do has an environmental aspect. Design for Harmony means designing for well-being, not just the well-being of our guests but also the well-being of the environment and the society that is around the hotel.” A key feature of this approach is that it extends
to supplier relationships. Accor is getting to know suppliers and property management teams better, scoring them against global sustainability standards. “As a big operating company, we don’t have the time
and resources to go into the same depth of research that our suppliers do,” he remarked. “We are working with a designer that is helping us to develop a room in Singapore that is supposed to be carbon-neutral and, to deliver that, we have to work with our suppliers. We are pushing the standards of all brands to point towards a much better sustainable future. “That means that we are demanding from our suppliers that they show us their carbon footprint,” he added. “They show us how they produce, how they ship, how they treat their staff, how they engage with the community. The same applies to management in
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
each property and we work with that in our guidelines, so that eventually it’s a standard thing.” Ultimately, sustainability cannot be separated from quality. “We want to design the best there is,” says Toresi.
“If there is a building company that wants to build my design, can they interpret it in the most durable, sustainable, design-led, experiential way that it possibly can be? That is the hardest part of what I do.”
A net-zero pledge For the architect’s perspective on what sustainability means in the hospitality sector, Neil Andrew, head of hospitality at global architecture and design practice Perkins &Will, gave his view on net-zero design. “Last year, we launched our net-zero hospitality
pledge,” he noted. “We’ve been at the forefront of sustainable construction methods for about 25 years and sustainability is really at our core. We have a process to track the carbon impact as you move through the design process.” This process involved identifying the big offenders
in a guest room – lighting, furniture, gypsum, carpets, resins, tiles – then going further to include transportation, construction and maintenance. The next step is to figure out how to deal with the embodied carbon in each item and to track greenhouse gas emissions stage-by-stage. “Data is what drives us through all of this,” Andrew
explained. “Our sustainability director outlines the objectives with the client’s expectations of what level of certification they’re after, then we move into the concept, then we do an initial net-zero circular design report.” “Then you get into more detail,” he added. “We can work on the design in Revit and actually create a materials passport for the project with a full inventory and materials database, so the client goes away with
23
Above: Federica Minozzi, CEO of Iris Ceramica Group, begins the event by discussing sustainability.
Opposite: Industry leaders come
together to discuss the development of high-end luxury brands with sustainability in mind.
ASV Photography Ltd
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