VIVA Webinar
Welcome everybody to the ATO webinar for Viva and this is about sourcing sustainable product my name is Tim Furst and I’m very pleased that today we’re joined by Virginia from bios school and and savier from University of su uh and it’s really their presentations that you’re here for so there’s going to be
Some introductory words from me about what we’re doing in this space and how we think the topic should be addressed and then Virginia followed by chavier will speak and if we time there’ll be a little bit of discussion afterwards so thanks very much for joining us I hope
You find the presentation is interesting so why are we having this discussion well one of the things that we’re focused on is supporting smmes throughout the tourism ecosystem in Europe also the buyers who may be anywhere in the world who are looking for sustainable product so that’s the
The private sector piece but there is clearly a big Des destination Focus piece as well so how a destination supporting a trans to more sustainable practice there’s a lot of rhetoric today we’re getting into the reality the tools the metrics the processes people are using in order to monitor progress and
To enable smmes to embed Implement and just incorporate into their daily management at sustainability tools will be focusing on climate to some extent but it’s broad spectrum sustainability that is catching the attention at the moment that’s the one with the number on it that’s easiest to catch but one of
The things you’ll find in the presentations is how we’re approaching other aspects of sustainability in order to support decision making either in terms of where you put your promotional spend or if you’re the private sector looking to Source product what’s the important factor for you is it social
Impact is it climate is it both and how how do the relative importance of these factors affect decision- making and how do they affect the design of decision-making support tools those are the sorts of things we’ll explore today couple of observations from me from from the point of view of a tra
Association and some of this is a bit counterintuitive from the private sector that’s that we probably need the framework to change faster than it seems to be because the space to do the wrong thing uh remains big and one of the risks to change is you vacate what is a
Commercially fertile area it might be a short-term area to be in but if people can still make money somewhere there is a very strong commercial incentive to do so so we need to drisk transition and partly that is to do with regulatory change but we also need to make it
Easier to move so it’s not just about coercion it is about support and tools now the private sector traditionally would say we’re a very consumer-led business this is about discretionary spend it’s about the annual decision of where to go on holiday um we’re led by our clients now this is probably one
Area where we as an industry need to be in front of the consumer because at best the evidence is mixed that sustainability is near the top of the list let alone top of the list when people are making decisions about where to go on a holiday it’s certainly growing uh flight free
Holidays are a growth sector within the European ecosystem but for Lon haul tourism unavoidably you’re Aviation dependent so therefore you’re very interested in mitigating what you can in the landbased ecosystem knowing that there’s a relatively high carbon cost of acquisition for people who come from L haul markets who overall may be
Considered valuable because of their seasonal uh patterns of of travel also the amount of money they spend per day so it’s all part of the mix but we need to move faster than the Consumer because it’s urgent we’ve got to hit in European 55% less than 1990 Levels by
2030 and we’re over halfway from the Paris Accords uh which mapped out progress from 2015 to 2030 so there’s some emergency we need to get going as an industry even though regulation would be helpful it won’t come fast enough neither will uh consumer uh uh demand the other big issue to mention
Which uh the speakers will touch on is complexity and compliance in Europe there are over 200 certification and accreditation systems that can look intimidating from the outside you need some expert help and one of the benefits of our experts today is that they will show that it doesn’t need to be that
Hard uh you you you don’t need to um feel intimidated by the complexity of the options out there there’s plenty of people who are available to help navigate that that system for you but reporting requirements are coming so sooner or later if you haven’t yet started uh reporting in a way that is
Subject to external scrutiny sooner or later you’ll have to um that just seems likely from a regulatory perspective and it’s certainly true that any claims you’re making particularly with respect to your environmental performance they will increasingly be subject to external rigor uh and the green claims directive from the EU perspective will require
People to examine what claims they’re making as to environmental impact and have those verified and audited before publishing them is the current proposal which is really a very high bar barrier to entry so exactly how this is going to work in practice is highly topical last point before I invite
Virginia to uh really get into a practical example of how these tools work is what’s needed are more tools and training to help people adopt all the new uh systems that are available they need to be simple um this has got to work for a big multinational company but
It’s also got to work for a small independent hotelier where everyone’s doing about four different jobs so we’re very interested to hear from Virginia how the overall variety of the ecosystem can get on board with the transition to more sustainable practice so with that thought so industry needs to move faster
It’s complicated but there is help available I’m very pleased to invite Virginia to explain what’s been going on in Valencia and how bioscore have been helping make that that happen Virginia welcome over to you thank you very much team thank you for your kindness inviting us to this
Webinar H I think I’m going to share with you my presentation I don’t know if you are seeing properly right now we can see that fine Virginia thank you sorry we can see your presentation that looks great thank you wonderful thank you greetings to you all from Valencia
Alicante ER from alicant Spain sorry I’m vinia sarob Chief sustainability uh officer in bioscore sustainability and I will do my best to explain to you how we support osex and its associates in the path forward being sustainable accommodations thanks to e AG strategies and how bscore sustainability helps osc to do so as
Part of our partnership H first of all I’m going to introduce you to osc osc is uh the hotel and tourism Business Association of the region of Valencia that brings together companies involved in Hospitality accommodation restaurants Leisure H which are located or carry out their main activity in region of valenia EK
Was founded in 19770 in the city of Benidorm and has grown to become one of the main tourism associations in Spain with four offices in Benidorm Alicante Valencia and castillon the main cities in region of Valencia the 332 current Associates mainly hotels and other types of accommodations represents a 100,000 beds in
Market OBC supports their Associates in several areas such as marketing and communication General Services health and safety quality and projects big data and analytics training and also H in sustainability Management in which we are focused today h and about bioscore H the other hand we are a platform specialized in
Sustainable touris dedicated to certification and Consulting Services through our own simple and secure management software we promote sustainabil practices to and offer H Travelers the option to choose environmentally responsible establishments since 2020 we have already rated more than 36,000 accommodations with our own sustainability rating system we have also certified more than 700
Accommodations with bioscore certification ation which is our own standard based in AJ criteria aligned with the yal sustainability T Council and also with global reporting initiative and bioscore certification is recognized with the travel sustainable level 3 plus on bing.com with bioscore h platform the accommodations can get their sustainability
Certification calculate the carbon uh carbon Footprints H calculate water footprint H monitor en consumptions prepare sustainability reports monitor sustainability kpis and among other things and together we we with osc h we collaborate to assist hotels and destinations in prioritizing sustainability management and making more more informed decisions we focus on intelligent data
Management to evaluate sustainability levels in destinations and generate Big Data H through a sustainability certification process for all the accommodations the rating platform ensures secure and accur data collection in a digital environment we said before that osc has 332 ass assciates currently around 100 of them are working with our platform being certificated
With B bioscore certification 67 accommodations the average grade of accommodations is a b seal that means that they meet 63% of the certification criteria we have different levels H CBA and a a plus starting with 50% achievement which is the minimum required for certification so we use this all big
Data gather from the vast amount of information storage in our platform H to provide osic with a kpi management system so that they can monitor sustainable performance level of the associates osc set the kpis which they think add more value to H the sustainable performance analysis of their Associates from an ECG
Approach um thus we monitor 52 kpis from six different areas which are emissions energy waste water food and beverage management and corporate social responsibility and we can see kpis like um number of accommodations calculating carbon footprint number of accommodations reporting on sustainability ER monitoring food waste H controlling energy
Consumption after establishing the kpi we design a dashboard ER so OS can analyze the information quickly and easily whenever necessary we know all that we appreciate use tools that add value but in a simple way uh the use of the platform is very intuitive H and the data is presented in
A visual way so you can obtain a lot of information in a simple glance here you have some pictures about the OBC dashboard in the first one you can see the accommodations performance by ARA represent in Dino Charge in in the different sections emissions energy water
Etc in the second one um you can see a line graph with the sustainability rate of accommodations H you can also see a green arrow pointed H to a press button in which um it says see hotels list and if you click there you can see the detail information
About the hotel rating shown in the picture below um these are just a couple of examples um to show you how the dashboard looks like finally bioscore prepares quarterly reports for osc monitoring ipis to outline a sustainability profile of the associates with all this information um if I may I would add that
As a tourist in professional for over 20 years I completely agree with the framework previously H presented by team and also we like to encourage the industry represented here to commit uh to a sustainability management from an in Innovative and digital approach to achieve the common sustainability development goals that
Should Inspire of all of us so that’s that’s everything from that’s all from bioscore and thank you very much for your attention Tim uh Virginia thank you so much if if I could invite you to stop sharing your screen um make a couple of remarks and then it’ll be over chiate so
Thank you I think that that’s really just shown in a very practical sense I mean there’s some big numbers there that’s over over 36,000 properties uh assessed and and over 700 certified that’s a very big data set and academic perspective is we sort of interested in
That amount of data over that period of time I think from a from a private sector perspective I suppose maybe we can talk about this later I’m I’m curious to know whether the uh the hotels and the network are reporting any any Market response so that if if they
Are certified then that suddenly sort of putting them on the as it were the approved list for The Operators who are looking to Source sustainable product you know what’s the value wi of getting certification for them from a commercial perspective because fundamentally this is you know this isn’t going to work
Unless there are market-based mechanisms which reward change uh and and that’s really the the key to this is designing things which you know the interests of climate and competition converge uh and I think that’s that’s the ideal and and and maybe I’m being a bit idealistic
Framing it that way but it also seems pragmatic we’re going to encourage people to move if there’s an economic incentive to do so as well as having half an eye on the changing regulatory environment chevier um I know you’ve been doing a lot of work which is focused on on tools that support
Decision making so do you want to give us a sense of you know who’s interested in this what What actors are commissioning you to do this sort of work and what sorts of outcomes are you driving to and what’s the shape of the the tools that you’re providing and and
What can they do over to you thanks Tim there are two ways of looking at this I understand where you’re coming from with you know we need a market incentive and I think organizations so far have looked at sustainability as a way of reducing operating costs through a good
Management of their energy Water waste and typically very little s if we brutally honest so nobody is going to favor a hotel because that hotel is reducing its operating costs don’t expect me to be willing to pay more for a hotel that actually works more efficiently the efficiencies in itself it’s reward
Customers will start rewarding you the moment you provide sustainable experiences that customer Centric and we don’t talk about this and for yourselves as an as Anor you know the key is there produce the financial savings through Eco efficiencies and ring fence the money you’ve saved to experiment with designing new products and experiences
That will happen to have sustainability at the core that will provide an experiential value to the customers the idea that we need to choose between price quality convenience risk novelty and sustainability is a joke right we should never promote sustainability at the expense of quality price location
Convenience we need to look at how sustainability helps you to promote those instead and I think that is one of the many reasons why we’ve been getting it so wrong and we had so little traction so far but moving on to something else um well I wanted to now share with you some
Of the work I’ve been doing with one of the tourist destinations that I love collaborating with you know Andalucia in the south of Spain and my co-author for the research work that we’re doing here is Anna Tes Del from University of Barcelona as well as of course IM magalo
From tourism Deli we start from the point that although we have many European National and Regional tourist vs that are coming up with new ways of improving the national tourism plan and Regional tourism strategies if you look at the stats here between 2020 and 2023 yes we do have a lot of plans
Sustainability happens to be mentioned everybody says they love sustainability and then look at it climate change mentioned by less than 50% carbon emissions also not mentioned recognition that we need to reduce emissions it is there in half the cases but when it comes to actually having specific
Strategies and plans and how we’re going to do it we not doing it and it looks to me like the ministries of environment have committed to a certain number of things on behalf of all of European citizens but the tourist board don’t seem to be interested or able to listen
To what’s happening there because it’s a little bit painful so we’ve come up with the first very very simple tool that everybody can use if your region if your business has data that says where are my customers coming from how much do they spend how long do they stay here and what’s their
Method of Transport you can come up with this graph and I can share an Excel spreadsheet free of charts that you can use to do this and a number of regional tourist boards and some National Tourist boards are doing it with us and I’m helping them you know to interpret the
Data the graph you got here is for it’s either the Hall of Spain or Barcelona it’s a Spanish T destination because you can see that the largest market here is the Spanish Market at the bottom left hand side and you can see that on the vertical we have the data we normally
Like to look at total expenditure per person for a holiday we could have also done it for expenditure per person per day okay and on the horizontal we’ve got what’s new which is the carvon footprint and you can see see that if you only looked at the vertical certain markets
Like Middle East Asia would look really attractive but the moment that then we can see that what’s the cost benefit right how do we look at how much carbon are we responsible for in order to achieve this income things look rather different from now on so with a graph
Like this a tourist board but also an individual business has to consider do I manage to make the same income for my business business of my destination with targeting markets that can be closer to home do I find a way of increasing the length of stay so with
Very similar carbon will have higher expenditure or do we optimize methods of Transport for example the reason I’m saying this is because more than 90% of the carbon footprint particularly the areas where it’s easiest for us to make changes as the result of the distance traveled by
Markets so if you’re a tourist dination is really far away from your Source markets honestly trying to do something with your hotels is pointless because you could put a lot of effort and the return investment in terms of reduction of carbon footprint will be minimal compared to trying to find more local
Markets because the majority of the carbon footprint is linked to that transport now I know that listening some of the things is painful and we need to think about how do we move forward and also when I’ve talked to some destinations they’ve said to us well we don’t only take decisions about the
Markets that we’re going to consider based on the amount of money that they spent there are other criteria so this is where with um turism Delia we came up with a new way of considering segmentation decisions based on more criteria than just the two that mentioned in the previous slide now the
Previous slide is very easy to come out with that data the data I’m proposing here takes a bit more effort okay and only tourist boards are prepared to actually go deeper will want to do this but the first set of criteria the benefits that you will get from Market segmentation you’ve already considered
Right so looking at whether your destination has a high market share for that particular Market looking at whether that particular Market is recovering quickly from the preo 19 numbers or whether it’s a market is quite sluggish looking at where that particular Market is very good at coming
Off season or whether is very highly concentrated in the High season where it may be easier to have alternative markets to fill in that same occupancy look at length of stay against because we know that with increased length of stay you’re more likely to geographically disperse you’re more
Likely to spend money on a broader range of businesses whereas when you have a short length of stay you’re more likely to go to the honey podge and to create that very un Pleasant sense of over tourism obviously expenditure we talked about it and then connectivity we want
To Market to those markets where we have the best transport connectivity because the return on investment on our marketing effort is likely to be uh rewarded equally we can no longer ignore the carbon footprint and this is just one of the many costs that we pay as destination we could talk about social
Cost as well but three criteria we’ve included in here include markets that have a low carbon footprint per person per night looking at ratios markets have a low carbon footprint for the entire trip and markets that have a high expenditure per unit of carbon so you can see there are three different ways
Of essentially coming up with a very similar result but the point here is considering what those numbers will look like now I’m not expecting you to learn what you’ve got here you can screenshot it and then you can look at it in more detail this is specifically again for
Andalusia what we found was that for each one of our key 15 International Market markets as well as the Spanish domestic Market or the regional market from within Andalusia there are different reasons for and against targeting each one of those markets so you can see that some of the more local
Markets do very well on carbon footprint but actually surprisingly don’t do so well on seasonality the markets they’re from a dynamism point of view they’re recovered fast but they’re problematic for length of stay because they tend to do short trips and their expenditure is low and the very other end we’ve got the
US market fantastic on seasonality obviously we’re not leaders in that market because there many other people that compete with that market but they’re good on seasonality they’re good on expenditure they’re really not good on carbon footprint compared to the other markets that we have on the table
And the key here is you cannot take decisions on Market segmentation based on one single variable right and I accept that also for carbon data you cannot just use carbon data as the only variable to take Market segmentation decisions but equally you can no longer ignore carbon segment data as part of your
Segmentation decisions what we noticed here was that if we included or excluded carbon data there were some changes in which could be the priority markets for us but those were not as radical as you may have thought in the first place okay so clearly without Mar without carbon footprint we had Finland Netherlands
Denmark swed Belgium and so on as our priorities whereas some of our more domestic markets were lower down and then we found that the moment we included carbon data and the Lu then came top we need to do more marketing for our regional markets this is something we all seem to remember during
Covid during covid we realized that locals actually spend money and we started talking to them again but for a long time it felt like we’d ignored them because they’re local they’ll come anyway they know what they can find around here but you can see that some of the markets like Netherlands for example
They still stay in second position irrespective of whether we include or excluded carbon data Belgium was not that different Ireland was not that different okay so the point that we’re trying to make in here is you need to consider carbon data now there are new tools that you can use for doing that
And we invite any destination as well as businesses to consider what the implications of including carbon data are going to be for your segmentation decisions thank you very much Shier and um Virginia do turn your camera on I think we might have just a couple of minutes
Left to to reflect on on what we’ve heard um and and I think chevier you said before you started your um your presentation you know we have been getting it wrong uh in in the sense that um you know there’s been a lot of frustration and and we pick it up as as
A trade Association that there was lots of expectation that with all the learnings of the value of Tourism during the pandemic because we we missed it but you know how would we want it to to come back in a different sort of way um thinking of another destination um you
Know that we do a lot of work with in Italy so take uh the US market to Italy in 2023 it was probably more than 10% higher than it was in 2019 so in oldfashioned terms that’s a very big success and as you pointed out US market
Is quite High spending and it’s got favorable seasonality aspects as well um and absolutely plays to the one of Europe’s big strengths which is cultural tourism I mean most Americans are not coming to Europe for a beach holiday uh they’re coming to Europe to to visit its cultural sites and uh but one
Observation is that it’s still quite similar business than it was in 2019 so thinking about the the the positive factors you were talking about like length of stay um I’m wondering if you’re picking up and and maybe you’re going to say you tell me because you’re
The private sector but do we think the sort of work you’re doing is going to stimulate product development and sales change in the sense that you might be encouraging people to stay for longer but perhaps travel less often if the travel component is higher in carbon and can that sort of calculate
Get Incorporated in in in the metrics you’re talking about so if I’m sitting in the United States and I’m looking at how I’m perceived as am I desirable less desirable I’m fairly confident that I’m you know bringing guests that are appreciative that spend good money but
You know how if I’m sitting in in California do I look like good business for a destination that is really trying to spend its promotional money wisely so can I sort of put that back to you that little thought experiment totally okay and and nobody is going to stop marketing to the US
Market right it makes sense but we need to be wise as to how we Market them what we Market them for and what we’re trying to sell to them are we selling to them as first time visitors or are we selling to them as repeat visitors are we
Selling them the products that anybody other alternative markets could be buying or are we selling them products that only they could be buying are we aware of how they can combine with other markets and how compatible they are with other supply and demand issues or are we prioritizing them and sometimes there’s
An opportunity cost from doing other things something that’s worth considering is we’re actually not very good at being Innovative we love the word but we don’t know how to do it and a lot of the sustainability work that we do is actually to not innovate right
Reducing energy water and waste is a way of maintaining business as usual keeping the same kind of hotels we have always had the same kind of experiences just doing it with lower costs cost reduction cannot be a long-term strategy you can only go so far with cost reduction as
Your business strategy at some point you need to look at Innovation and if you look at Cost savings as a way of just reducing operating costs not as a way of creating a budget for Innovation you don’t have a business plan for very long that’s clear and it’s it’s a challenge
To uh product developers uh in in Long Haul Source markets and I I think from our perspective and looking ahead to some other activity we’re doing later this year April 8th and 9th in London we have our destination as exchange Europe where we’re really inviting people to
Look at 2025 26 in terms of what are you selling and what are you offering and how will things change and I think your point that effic is is just what business should do um and don’t expect to be patted on the back by your clients you know maybe it looks like good
Management that’s welcome maybe you’ve got metrics which show that you’re making incremental improvements on your environmental footprint that’s also welcome but but I think your critical point that it’s about designing experiences which have a positive impact as well as mitigating the negative impact but it’s you know this is a value
Adding industry and we shouldn’t forget that and we should locate that value around sustainability in the first place and that will be a a self-fulfilling virtuous circle if if I’ve understood you right absolutely I I think we’re close to the end of uh our running time
Today um there’s a lot we could discuss but I think Virginia um do you have any last Reflections from you on the you know what you’ve heard thinking about it from from that hotel EOS system perspective are they also looking at their uh segmentation in terms of origin
Market are they actively promoting in certain ways because part of their job is to optimize capacity they want to fill those rooms so to what extent does sustainability and Commercial considerations link up from from your perspective yeah from our perspective is is is um it depends on the kind of
Accommodation um we have a lot of um accommodations certified with bios score they are big they are um we have another um that are have a lot of budget and and and can do it very well but um in general they need tools and help to guide them in sustainability
Manner management you know and they right now they are focused in the management and I don’t think they are not focused in the perspective of the commercial way or or The Innovation Way they are working on it working on the sustainable management and they are not
Thinking in other things um so it’s it’s very difficult sometimes for the accommodations um is is the is very important that they focus on it and they are going to see that his commercial position is going to improve and his position in some H search engines or Pages like booking.com or
Something like that um are going to increase but they are right now in in a basic in a basic Place thinking about um about management I think they are not thinking big about um doing another strategy or or things like that thank you well I
Think we are now at the end of our time and and what I’m taking away is the challenge is to really take an Innovative approach to incorporating sustainability both from a destination perspective but particularly from a private sector perspective which will need collaboration with destinations who are supporting their ecosystems in their
Own transition but there’s a lot for the private sector to do in order that the offer in a few years time does look substantially different than it does now we’re here to help support that but we’re extremely grateful to The Experts we’ve had today to show us what’s out
There in practice helping enable that transition so Virginia and chevier thank you very much indeed for your time looking forward to talking to you again soon thank you for having us