Nathan Kim
October 19, 2013 Sustainability Roundtable: Sustainability and Luxury
Facilitator: Natalie Chan, The Peninsula Hotels In this session of the Sustainability Roundtable, the participants discussed how the luxury segment could adopt sustainable practices in a way that enhanced environmental awareness. The challenge here is in implementing sustainable practices while simultaneously minimizing costs and maintaining if not improving guest satisfaction. Facilitator Natalie Chan of The Peninsula Hotels posed the question, “can luxury be sustainable, or are we deluding ourselves?” Kirby Brendsel, Associate Director of Starwood Global Citizenship, took Natalie’s question a step further. He felt that asking if luxury can be sustainable is premature and we must first define what sustainability in luxury looks like. This was a rhetorical question since Kirby believes if he asked twelve people to describe luxury in sustainability he would receive twelve different responses. Paul Snyder, VP of Corporate Responsibility in InterContinental Hotels Group, had an answer to Kirby’s paradox. Paul suggested that luxury has both a generational and a cultural component, which is why the definition of luxury and sustainability are both moving targets. Natalie acknowledged this point by saying that we are looking at the next generation of luxury customers, those of us who will be guests ten years from today. When it comes to sustainability, we must consider our future guests’ perspectives and their tolerance for sustainable practices in a hotel. These practices should not make the guest feel guilty about sustainability (i.e. putting the “wash towels” card on the door handle) and should allow the guest to still fully enjoy all the hotel’s services and amenities. Retrofitting luxury hotels is especially difficult because of the expected quality of amenities and FF&E. As noted by Cornell University professor of service operations, Rohit Verma, luxury is synonymous with high quality and excellence. He acknowledged that, yes, luxury and sustainability can coexist; however, we are not yet being innovative enough as an industry. Professor Verma drew upon personal experience with an anecdote from his dining experience at a luxury hotel. He said that his fellow hotel guests asked to try a sustainable wine option which the waiter discouraged saying that the wines were both more expensive and not as good quality. Professor Verma then noted that perhaps “sustainable options are contradictory to luxury”. In conclusion, it seems that a majority of the roundtable participants believe that sustainability in luxury is viable but extensive efforts must be made to move forward. Paul Snyder says that we can start from the BOH and move to the FOH, because it is not frowned upon to cut costs by replacing high quality materials for more sustainable options. Paul noted that luxury properties are by build the most inefficient hotels in the portfolio, but this may be a blessing in disguise providing numerous opportunities for sustainable practice implementation.