With rising awareness of environmental issues and the growing concern regarding plastic pollution, it is a great time for hotel owners to work on their Corporate Responsibility (CR) Strategies. CR Strategies and their implementation lead to an increasingly positive brand image, improved customer loyalty, increased staff engagement and a reduction in operational costs.
A CR Strategy looks at all aspects of sustainability material to the business, from community engagement to environmental pollution. Considerate Hoteliers approaches Corporate Responsibility Strategy and its implementation by:
Making it sexy – the challenge is to make sustainability less boring. Re-thinking sustainability with appealing images and activities leads to greater participation.
Creating own brand – to naturally embody corporate responsibility, hotels need to have their own corporate responsibility story that goes hand in hand with their company vision and mission. A great example of this is the CR branding of our client, the Oetker Collection .
Engaging staff– we want staff to feel empowered and involved in the process, so sustainability becomes part of their natural thought processes and actions. We provide the tools, and the staff implement them as appropriate to their operation.
Engaging guests – we wish to positively influence guest perception by making them feel part of the project and bring back home the hotel’s corporate responsibility story. We hope this might also encourage them to adopt more environmentally friendly behaviours at home.
Making it relevant & tangible – projects need to resonate with the locality and branding of the hotel. If the hotel is near to a coral reef, it would be natural and engaging to develop an initiative to eliminate sunscreen with oxybenzone.
Using technology to monitor & measure – we use Con-Serve™, our environmental data management system to reduce costs and CO2 emissions. What gets measured gets managed!
Communicating – to reinforce corporate responsibility engagement all activities need to be communicated to hotel stakeholders.
Complying & Reporting – the hospitality business needs to provide transparency and credibility of their corporate responsibility actions. Reporting can vary from mandatory to voluntary – for example we have worked on both the development of a carbon report with Mustique Island, and the development of the UN Global Compact report with Oetker Collection.
With the development and implementation of a Corporate Responsibility Strategy, Considerate Hoteliers shares risks, responsibilities, resources, and benefits with their clients to ultimately achieve a common purpose: drive responsible management at every level of the operation.
