Sustainability and circularity in hospitality

Published on December 31, 2023   25 min
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0:00
Hello and welcome to this short course on Sustainability and Circularity in Hospitality. My name is Wily Legrand. I'm a professor at the IU International University of Applied Sciences in Germany and I have authored a half a dozen books on the subject of sustainability in the hospitality industry. I conduct research in the field of sustainability and hospitality for the past two decades.
0:25
Now, you probably know this already, the modern-day hospitality professional requires an in-depth knowledge in the traditional fields of operations, finance, marketing, customer relationship, branding, media and communication. But now, understanding your hotel's environmental impacts and social responsibility are equally important. Some hotel and restaurant companies have made an effort to deal with the impact their business activities have on the environment and the communities in which they operate, particularly by measuring and reducing their carbon emissions or perhaps they have tackled their water footprint because they operate in a water scarce area, while others have taken food waste reduction to heart. Or maybe they've engaged in local communities. Whatever it is, hotel businesses are interested in efficiencies. Besides, we know that a clean environment is a key factor to attract guests, and being a good citizen, helps to improve a business reputation.
1:24
But there are mounting issues related not only to the ways and impacts when operating a hospitality business, but also about the way goods needed for hotel and restaurant operations are being produced, in terms of working conditions and quality concerns from furniture to food provision. So what does sustainable hospitality mean? Let's tackle this together with seven short sections. We'll start with the understanding of the umbrella term, sustainable tourism. We'll move to define sustainable hospitality. We'll take a look at who the stakeholders are in hospitality and why those play a critical role when it comes down to sustainability. We'll pull all of this together with a sustainable hospitality framework. Then we will bridge to the concept of circularity in hospitality. We'll look at a case study using one critical practice of circularity, which is upcycling. To make it even more interesting, we'll look at upcycling in a luxury hotel sector. Finally, we'll finish with an outlook on sustainable hospitality approaches.
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Sustainability and circularity in hospitality

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