“It should be a jailable offence to greenwash”, says Bouteco’s Kinsman
IF there was one key message from Episode 5 of the WiT Travel Roadshow last Thursday, it is that it is the industry’s opportunity to turn “revenge travel” into “beautiful travel” by putting sustainability principles at the heart of everything.
Indeed, travel suppliers can play a role in shaping and influencing that recovery – from the organising of information online, making it easier for consumers to make informed decisions, educating travellers on making smart choices, and creating tours and experiences that connect to local communities.
Juliet Kinsman, sustainability editor for Condè Nast Traveller, started with a clear declaration that the desire to travel better is not going anywhere. Having just seen her own home in London damaged by the recent floods which ravaged the UK and Europe recently, she said, “I am afraid climate change is fully with us. We’re experiencing it even in London.”
She added, “Sustainability, for me, it’s not a trend, it’s here to stay, and we have to care” and that doesn’t mean just throwing around buzzwords but “pulling back the curtain” to understand the impact of travel and what it means to travel sustainably.
When asked how she as a journalist calls out “greenwashing” by travel suppliers, Kinsman, who also runs bouteco.co, an independent authority on sustainable design-led hotels, said that “it should be a jailable offence to greenwash”.
She said, “There are two ways of looking at green washing. One is that you’re just investing a disproportionate amount of money in celebrating the few good things you do rather than actually investing in having a business that operates in a way that has less negative impact on the environment or socially. Then the other way of looking at it is, are you just using the right words, but behind the scenes, you’re not walking that talk?”
In a later post on LinkedIn, Kinsman commented, “How is it any different to having misinformation and lies printed on food packaging? It needs to be legislated against and policed?”
She said it was important for suppliers to “show us you’re sustainable, not just tell us”.
Her comments were picked out at a subsequent BGreener virtual event in which guest speaker Andrew Dixon, founder of Nikoi and Cempedak Islands, Indonesia shared his approach to sustainability.
For him, it’s a journey and it’s not something he sells. “We don’t market ourselves around sustainability or being necessarily even eco-friendly – we don’t use that eco word in our literature, we prefer to try and offer something that is a unique experience for a lot of people. If they’re interested, they can read about our sustainable practices or they can join one of our tours around the island to learn about what we do.”
Commenting on Kinsman’s point that greenwashing should be a jailable offence, Dixon said enforcing that would be challenge, even though he would welcome it. He eschews the label of “eco-anything” because it has become synonymous with trade-offs.
He said customers can play their part by calling out greenwashing. The challenge, he said, is that it’s not always easy to do because “often, a lot of this stuff happens behind the scenes. So, what I’d encourage people to do is to ask for tours of properties to go behind the scenes and see it first-hand.” Hotels with good sustainability practices in place would be delighted to show them to customers, he continued.
Being armed with information empowers consumers to make better choices, and travel suppliers are increasingly seeing that as a value-added service that they can provide. And that is what Kinsman, a former music journalist, is trying to do in her beat as a journalist.
She recalled the moment when she became aware of the need to focus on sustainability in her writing. It was 15 years ago, she was in a spa in Arizona. “I’m not someone who just suddenly became interested in sustainability, I’ve always cared about the planet and making “better choices”.”
But there she was in a spa, “100 and something degrees outside, yet inside it was so air conditioned that they could have an open fireplace. And then on the terrace, they had water jets and I just thought what a waste of natural resources just so we can have a certain experience.”
She said it was important travellers look at the bigger picture and ask what their contribution can be.
As to the question as to why it is assumed that sustainable choices should cost the consumer more, Kinsman said, “Sustainability absolutely shouldn’t cost more. In fact, if a business is run efficiently, which is what sustainability is, there should be enough savings to pass that savings on to the customer. We should, however, be prepared to pay for quality. We always thought location and cost are the biggest sort of influences on where we choose to go and how much we would spend.
“I do think really valuing where our money is going (is important) – it feels nicer to be somewhere that you know they’re paying their staff properly, or that they’ve invested in the local community.”
Laurent Kuenzle, CEO of Asian Trails, speaking on a subsequent panel, expressed a similar outlook, saying, “if I look at the history of my company, what we have been doing in the last 20 years, we’ve been doing so much sustainability, because we went into destinations that, really, you had no choice but to go local. And you saw these communities who had nothing. Of course, it was almost automatic that you were helping them to benefit from people visiting the country. We didn’t call it sustainability at that time. But this is really what it was.”
Kinsman said consideration of spending where it matters has become even more critical because with the devastation of Covid, “the small independents haven’t been able to keep afloat and the venture capitalists are circling, circling, and the asset managers are rubbing their hands together, and what they can buy. And that’s fine if they can save these small businesses and allow them to be a big part of their community.
“But I think what we all know is that unfortunately, sometimes in hospitality, it becomes less about providing a great experience for the customer, and more about marrying that asset with a management company that will maximise profits for the owner. I think it’s something we all need to be thinking about is how can we leave as much money in local communities through these independent businesses? How can we champion them and support them and really think about community economics?”
In her book, “Travel: Easy Tips for the Eco-friendly Traveller”, she encourages selecting destinations “that need us more than others” as well as those that have a “heart and head for sustainability and conservation” – her book lists those countries as Venezuela, Slovenia, Bhutan, Cambodia and Namibia while Palau makes travellers sign a voluntary “eco-pledge”.
“It’s really interesting when you see a whole country committing to being more sustainable – we all know that Bhutan is definitely top of that list. They have the dream tourism strategy, which is less people spending more money, and that might sound really exclusive and elitist but when you look at it in terms of how much money is left in the local community, and how much that actual footfall and traffic causes environmental damage, it’s a good strategy.”
She cited the Global Peace Index as a “lighthouse way of looking at a country and how sustainable it is”. In the 2021 ranking, Iceland tops the list, followed by New Zealand, Portugal, Austria and Slovenia.
In her book, she advises consumers to go to alternative spots (other than most visited areas) and to avoid flying whenever possible. If you have to fly, fly direct, or fly economy, she said. For longhaul, she said consumers who want to travel better will be more intentional about longhaul, not doing away with it, but making sure that emissions are “well spent”, with longer itineraries or on activities that benefit local communities.
The key trend though is “we’re slowing down. It was a forced slowdown, we’re taking less trips and so that means that when we do travel, we go away for longer, we’re much more considerate of where we go, how we travel. And I have to say, I like this idea of taking less trips, but really investing more time and thought into the ones that we do take.”
And slowing down is not necessarily a bad thing if it allows suppliers the space to be mindful and intentional about their own sustainability journeys.
Kuenzle related how for an Asian Trails tour to be categorised as sustainable, it must meet at least three of the ESTEEM Principles (Eat locally, Stay eco-friendly, Travel alternatively, Experience meaningfully, Empower viably, Monitor Continuously), which is the mechanism the company has developed to evaluate their own offerings. This, he said, “makes it clear for the customer what he’s getting, but the message is also that sustainability is a journey, it’s not just an objective.”
A journey, and a state of mind. Sustainability whether from the supplier or consumer perspective, really starts with caring – taking the time to evaluate the impact of our decisions, then investing the energy into making better ones, or as Dixon puts it, “I think it shows you care. And if you care, people see that.”
• Featured image credit: Petmal /Getty Images
