MARKETING SUSTAINABILITY IN THE HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM
5.5 ELEMENTS OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM MARKETING MIX
5.5.5 PARTICIPANTS
Tourism participants include the customers, employees and partners, who have to be educated, managed and sensitized by the tourism managers about sustainable practices. Regular reviews about various practices, need to be for- mally communicated among all participants in the Tourism Value Chain, so that all can critically analyze the existing measures and suggest improvements.
This would also involve regular trainings and workshops for the participants, around sustainability project related initiatives. Hilton Hotels in Continental Europe serve as an example for the use of partnerships in fostering sustainable tourism marketing.
Illustrative Case 5: Hilton Hotels in Continental Europe: We Care Program (2006–2008)
Bohdanowicz et al. (2011) suggest that a shift of an organization towards en- vironmental management is closely connected with the people who actually carry out this change (and sometimes even resist the change)—the employees.
For environment-friendly initiatives to be included in the organizational ac- tivities, it is imperative that the ‚”human factor” remains supportive since they are at the helm of operational activities and have better insight into waste- ful and damaging practices than the senior management (Rothenberg, 2003).
Post and Altman (1994) highlighted that ‘participants,’ of the envisioned Sus- tainable Tourism Marketing Mix, can act barriers towards ecological change.
This happens due to disengaged attitude of personnel; detached management which does not understand, or does not care, about the relationship between environment and economic costs, gap between the commitment of the top management and its execution within the organization and the “administrative heritage” meaning the past practices (Standard Operating practices) which are not environmentally sustainable.
The Hilton Hotels (part of the Hilton Worldwide which comprises of 10 brands) in Continental Europe took cognizance of the importance between sustainable tourism and the role of participants (especially employees) and launched their region-wide environmental program called ‘ We Care!’ (Bo- hdanowicz et al., 2011). The We Care Program was launched in 2006 and it was based on five principles. On 1st January 2006, all Hilton Hotels in Europe received a “Green Box” which officially marked the beginning of the pro- gram. The contents of the Green Box were designed to motivate the Partici- pants, encourage them to extend cooperation and all contents resonated with basic five principles of the program. Table 1 elaborates on the principles of the We Care Program and its interconnectedness with the Green Box.
TABLE 1 We Care program and the Green Box.
Five Principles of the We Care Program Green Box and its Contents Top Management endorsed and elaborated
on an environmental policy A video featuring an interview with Wolfgang Neumann (then, Area President), discussing the relevance of Environmental Sustainability initiatives for hotels.
ITP (“International Tourism Partnership”) guidelines were created for ensuring that sustainability prevails in the choice of hotel site, design as well as construction
A Power Point presentation explaining, not just the ITP but all other aspects of the We Care Program.
Five Principles of the We Care Program Green Box and its Contents Online courses on sustainable tourism—
‘eco-Learning’ For conducting training/environmental
workshops, instructions were provided, on how these workshops should be run.
These were regularly supported by the
‘eco-Learning’ courses.
LightStay—a global sustainability-moni- toring tool devised and used by the brands of Hilton WorldWide (This monitoring program was earlier called the Hilton Envi- ronmental Reporting). LightStay reported, on a monthly basis, energy consumption per hotel and could make inter-hotel com- parison of performance, comparison with country average and comparison with the Hilton Worldwide average as well.
Material to be used during workshops was provided. Training also included familiarization with the Computerized monitoring system (LightStay).
Training material on comparing hotel’s performance with the ITP benchmarks- the ITP EnvironmentBench.
Company’s website dedicated to the pro-
gram—www.hiltonwecare.com. Linen and Towel “change on demand cards” were provided. This induced the involvement of guests in energy and water conservation.
To ensure that participants from varied processing areas (that are widely different), collectively identify and solve problems, the composition of the We Care Program team, called the Green Team, at each hotel was cosmopolitan.
Figure 2 shows the Green Team’s Composition. To maximize the Participants’
buy-in, Hilton offered free mountain bikes to all employees of the best per- forming hotel.
FIGURE 2 Green Team’s composition at Hilton.
TABLE 1 (Continued)
Figure 2 reflects Hilton’s belief that the environment performance of a firm could only be improved when all initiatives are employee driven. This approach has also been recommended by Post and Altman (1994). It clearly reiterates that the success of Sustainable Marketing Management required strong support from the Participants in the Value Chain.
Andrew Forte, Director-Energy Management and Sustainability at the Hil- ton, shared with the media that (Bohdanowicz et. Al, 2011).
“In a nutshell, we care! delegates responsibility to team members who can really identify improvements and then implement them. Our aim was to create a culture in which all our team members feel empowered to propose improve- ments and then have the opportunity to actually change their actions. The re- sults show that we are beginning to make a difference but this is just the start.”
Positive change augmented by the We Care! program in the first three years.
• Hilton Europe reduced the consumption of energy in its hotels by 6.7%, in the first year of the program. This exceeded the target of 5%, which the hotel had set for itself.
• The hotel saved more than USD 3 million as energy costs.
• Hilton hotels in Europe, reduced the water consumption by 8% per guest night.
• Energy consumption was reduced by 15%.
• CO2 emissions were reduced by 8% per guest night, which translated into 28,600 tons CO2 which was prevented from being released.
• Hotel group saved USD 16 million in its water and energy bills.
• Employees were self-driven in organizing green activities such as
“Clean up the world” or “Earth Hour.”
• The Hotel attributes savings of USD 9.6 million, to the changed human behavior.