Right down to breakfast

When hotels train staff to compost, save water and serve sustainable smorgasbords, there’s a top-level strategy at work.

Most senior managers are incompetent,” says Karl-Henrik Robèrt.

It’s a bold statement, but Robèrt has studied plenty of companies from top to bottom – and found them wanting. “In too many organisations, top management runs the business but lets middle management take care of sustainability,” he despairs. “The responsibility must belong to top managers because they’re the experts in running complex systems. And the biosphere is a complex system.”

As founder of The Natural Step, an international NGO that helps businesses develop sustainably Robèrt has seen a lot of hotels on his travels, too. And if there’s one company where top management has taken the initiative, it’s Scandic, the Nordic region’s leading chain with 135 hotels in nine countries and around eight million guest nights a year.

Back in 1994, the company was in deep financial trouble. The new chief executive, brought in to sort things out, turned to Robèrt for answers.

“He came to us because he’d understood the need to introduce sustainable core values, objectives and strategic goals into the business,” says Robèrt. The Natural Step started by briefing Scandic top management on the principles of environmental and social sustainability, and giving them a framework to apply those in a competitive way. It went on to help broadcast the messages throughout the business, training all its 5,000 team members – and, in return, asking them for suggestions of sustainable innovations to take forward.

Scandic is now systematically introducing these practices in all its hotels [see box], and 97 of them already boast the Nordic Swan eco-label. The company has had to work closely with suppliers to get to this stage. For example, when the company couldn’t find a suitable Swan-labelled television, it asked Philips to develop one. It took the same approach with Lux, which changed its recipe for liquid soap/shampoo to bring it in line with the Swan label, and packaged it in a smart dispenser rather than disposable sachets.

“The inclusion of everyone in the sustainability process has created an immensely strong internal company culture.”

Within the business itself, the inclusion of everyone in the sustainability process has created “an immensely strong internal company culture”, says Jan Peter Bergkvist, Scandic’s vice president for sustainable business. There are more tangible results too. Energy and water consumption per guest night fell by 17% and 14% respectively in the decade from 1996 to 2006. CO2 emissions have been cut by 30%. Scandic has set itself the ambitious target of reducing them by 50% by 2011, and eliminating them altogether by 2025. “You could say that it’s brave – or stupid,” laughs Bergkvist. “But we know we can halve it by switching to renewable electricity tariffs in Finland and Denmark and by replacing the last oil boilers in our hotels with biomass boilers or connecting them to district heating.”

“These reductions all translate into financial savings,” adds Bergkvist. The investment in team member training and consultation, for example, repaid itself within six months. More importantly, he feels, the strategy has future-proofed the hotel chain. “I’m quite convinced that any company that does not understand sustainability will be unlucky in business,” he says. “It will be hit by taxes, high energy costs and the costs of waste regulation.”

As Robèrt puts it: “Hotels that satisfy customers while being sustainable at the same time will be the successful businesses of the future.” – Trevor Lawson

The Natural Step International is a Forum for the Future partner

5 January 2008

Trevor Lawson