Going Beyond Green

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Sustainability with legacy

These days, it seems, everyone is making strides in sustainability, from locally sourced menus to carbon-neutral venues. But environmental impact isn’t everything. In fact, if we look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (U.N. SDGs), a set of 17 global objectives towards achieving a more sustainable future, many have very little to do with things like carbon impact. Consider goal number one: “End poverty in all its forms everywhere.” Number two is zero hunger, and three is good health and well-being.

It has become increasingly clear that being “green” isn’t all there is to sustainability—and the tourism, hospitality and events industries are taking that to heart with a growing commitment to sustainable practices that are a pillar, rather than a side operation, of business strategy.

When it comes to business events, at the heart of this sustainability strategy is the concept of “responsible tourism”—In essence, the union of environmental stewardship with community well-being.

Embracing a Responsible Tourism Approach

Sophia Hyder Hock, chief inclusion officer at Destinations International (DI), puts it this way: “Responsible tourism is the practice of designing, managing and executing tourism experiences in ways that prioritize social, environmental and economic well-being…In the context of meeting planning, responsible tourism requires a holistic and intentional approach that considers the impact of every decision on the host community, attendees and the environment.”

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This looks like supplier diversity and inclusive procurement. It means actively engaging the local community. It is the practice of ensuring that your event design is inclusive, that you are making ethical decisions, and that you are holding yourself, your suppliers, your venues and your attendees accountable to making progress towards a legacy initiative that aligns with your values.

“It’s not just the ethical choice; it’s the best business decision.”

-Emily Scheiderer

Responsible tourism, Hyder-Hock explains, used to be seen as a “nice-to-have concept rather than a necessary business imperative.” It was a marketing strategy or a CSR objective—a separate add-on. “Only a small number of tourism stakeholders were driving this movement,” she says. “Today…it has become a business necessity. Current understanding recognizes that tourism has a profound impact on local communities, cultures, economies and the natural environment.”

DI’s Tampa Bay Case Study, built around its 2024 Annual Convention (DIAC 2024), is a leading example of a sustainability strategy with responsible tourism at its core. During a time when Florida faced scrutiny for political decisions that some attendees disagreed with, DI chose to host DIAC 2024 in Tampa Bay and assess the influence a large convention could have to address issues of concern in the local community.

Leor Rotchild has built his career around sustainable business consulting and is a nationally recognized speaker and podcaster. He is also the author of the recently published book, “How We Gather Matters: Sustainable Event Planning for Purpose and Impact,” which offers itself as a practical guide to leveraging events as a conduit for social change. He joins this conversation on responsible tourism, and underlines the power of events, saying, “This is a responsibility and an opportunity to be positioned as part of the solution and inspire people to make really transformational change. We’re not talking about changing this industry to the point where it’s unrecognizable—we’re talking about adapting this industry to fit the future we need to be moving towards, and that’s both exciting and empowering.”

Sustainability as Strategy

Emily Scheiderer, DI’s senior director of education sales and services, says that a comprehensive strategy is key to creating lasting positive change. “We can go through a million different examples of big and small changes that will create true impact, but step one is to start accepting that these areas of consideration are business decisions that meet ethical and business intelligence needs,” she says. “And they have to be part of the strategy, not elements that are thought of when we get further, after we’ve contracted a destination and a hotel.”

Rotchild says, in his sustainable consulting work, the first thing he has his clients do is “develop a purpose statement to rally your team, suppliers and audience around a common goal.” It is from an intentional purpose statement that a lasting strategy is born, and planners can achieve their goals.

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“Nobody is doing it perfectly, and nobody is going to do it perfectly,” Scheiderer says. “We don’t have to start big, but we do have to start now.” She says that a sustainability strategy includes three key areas.

1. Environmental Inclusions

This is what most sustainability strategies include—in other words, how we “go green.” There are five areas within this category that a planner wants to consider:

Travel and Transportation: Air travel emissions, lower-emission ground transportation, guidance on walkability and offsetting.

Food and Beverage: Supply chain and waste management.

Built Environment: Venue compliance and standards, sustainable materials, repurposed materials and responsible tear down and clean up.

Cultural and Resident Impacts: An often overlooked area is how an event might disrupt the community. Noise pollution, traffic congestion and road closures, and how those disruptions can be reduced.

Resources, Waste and Sustainable Procurement: How procurement, use of resources and waste management fit into the categories above.

2. Social Inclusions

This is the category that timelines and communications fall under. Are you giving attendees enough information and time to prepare and plan to be sustainable within the destination as individuals? This is where these categories can intersect; for example, see the aspect of including walkability information under “travel and transportation” in the environmental inclusions category.

It also includes accessibility, so making sure that your menus are accessible to people with different dietary needs and that your event accommodates attendees with disabilities, like closed captioning on presentations and quiet spaces.

3. Communications and Marketing Strategies

“Marketing and messaging are very easy to tweak within our business event strategy and can go a very long way,” Scheiderer says. “We can over-communicate—and that’s not a bad word.”

Share information regarding all the aforementioned areas with attendees before, during and after the event. This enables attendees to comprehensively understand how they can support these efforts and make a difference in what sustainable participation looks like—and celebrate successes!

Impacting Local Economy

Rotchild advises that planners can make some of the most significant changes by assessing their supply chains and procurements, and then adjusting where needed. “Do so in a way that sends a clear marketing signal that, of course you want a competitive price, but it’s not the only thing you’re basing your decision on. You also want them to help you achieve some sustainability outcomes, and that might open the door to a different type of supplier that might bid on your contracts.”

“This is a responsibility and an opportunity to be positioned as part of the solution and inspire people to make really transformational change.”

-Leor Rotchild

This is an opportunity to leave the local community better than you found it. He says, “Being more thoughtful in the kinds of things we spend money on [can mean] supporting local businesses and artisans.”

At DIAC 2024, Hyder-Hock says DI’s partnership with Visit Tampa Bay and community leaders “helped to ensure that tourism dollars benefited the local economy. Planners can prioritize supplier diversity by contracting with local, small and diverse businesses, such as minority-owned, women-owned, LGBTQ+-owned and disability-owned enterprises. This could include sourcing catering, venues, amenities, audiovisual support and event decor.” The positive community impact was undeniable; the final report saw more than $3.5 million in direct economic impact in the Tampa Bay community.

“Investing in local businesses is an important opportunity, and there’s empowerment there, too,” says Rotchild. “You’re helping turn the experience into something the community is able to strategize and build growth plans around.”

Community Impact Through Participation

By incorporating the local community into your event, not only do you drive economic growth; you also have the opportunity to improve the lives of locals and the attendee experience.

Scheiderer says, “Involving individuals within different workforces in the community can help those individuals grow and connect. It can tap into underrepresented portions of the community and give them opportunities to engage in new industries, and on the flip side, it can bring brand new talent to the industry and events that are coming in.”

Post-pandemic, more than ever, people want to see value in exchange for their time, Scheiderer explains. By tying in local thought leadership, you’re providing attendees with local intellectual capital that they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else. And, she says, “You’re also giving them the ability to go to an event where they get to leave a place better than they found it, and that is going to speak to the shifts we’ve seen in attendee sentiment and help them have justification for attending your event.”

In Tampa Bay, DI brought in critical stakeholders, including Mayor Jane Castor and Visit Tampa Bay president and CEO Santiago Corrada. Hyder-Hock says that doing so demonstrated the power of collective problem solving to address the challenges at hand. “Meeting planners can leverage their events as platforms for community advocacy,” she explains. “By inviting local leaders, nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups to participate in panels, workshops or community forums, meeting planners create space for education, awareness and action. This not only enhances the attendee experience but also contributes to the community’s growth and progress.”

Invest in Impact

The fact of the matter is, sustainability matters to attendees. In fact, you may very well be attracting new, bigger audiences. “There’s a growing number of discerning consumers that are looking for this, so we need more opportunities on the marketplace to offer what people are looking for,” Rotchild says.

“At times,” he explains, “you have to spend money to make money and to grow your audience.” But there are also ways to save on costs, such as in your energy usage or waste management expenses. Rotchild suggests looking at it through a new lens: “How do we take some of our biggest costs associated with energy use and turn it into an audience engagement tool? Yes, some of this may be new to people—but it also really helps to engage people who have been doing this for a while. There is an audience attraction, an investor and sponsor attraction, and a client attraction opportunity here.”

Scheiderer echoes these points, saying, “Any shifts at all that we make within business events are always going to impact budgets or attendee experience—but that doesn’t mean it will have a negative impact on those things.” Maybe you’ll pay a higher price for a local speaker, but in doing so, you offset speaker travel costs and additional carbon emissions, and you check off that attendee satisfaction point of providing intellectual capital that they can only get at your meeting.

There will always be attendees who aren’t as welcoming to changes. But, she adds, “when you’re building inclusive events and strategies, you may also be tapping into previously untapped attendee markets and creating a different kind of value that could overshadow those minor inconveniences, or massively grow your attendance and have a lot of first-time attendees who don’t have those historical concepts in mind of what this event should look like.”

Scheiderer says, “It’s not just the ethical choice; it’s the best business decision. Events have to continue to evolve with the needs of attendees as attendees evolve.”

By developing a strategic plan that encompasses a responsible tourism approach, you enhance your event’s long-term viability. “This will drive your revenue, your attendance and everything that is going to contribute to the long-term success of your event, as well as the internal buy-in that will help you get the funding you need for more sustainability within your events and in other elements. The incentive to truly embrace responsible tourism, on both sides, is that it is a necessity to both the longevity and the success of both communities and events.”

Designing for Legacy

Developing a sustainability strategy as part of a business event structure is what ensures events thrive in an evolving world. A focus on the long-term outcomes rather than the impacts of one individual event is what leaves a legacy.

“Planners should think beyond the event itself and ask, ‘What legacy will this event leave behind?’ This might include donating leftover materials to local organizations, creating community service components for attendees or forming strategic partnerships with community organizations that last beyond the event’s end,” Hyder-Hock says.

Developing a sustainable events strategy with responsible tourism at its heart is how we create an events industry that the world celebrates. An events industry with a responsible tourism approach brings in fresh perspectives and new thought leaders; it supports underserved people and communities; it provides ways to not only reduce harm to the environment, but also prevent future harm and even undo harm that has been done.

“Think beyond the event itself and ask, ‘What legacy will this event leave behind?’”

-Sophie Hyder-Hock

“We have to remember that we are talking about the longevity of communities and the longevity of events,” Scheiderer says. “Responsible tourism is not a nice-to-have when it comes to these two things. It is an absolute necessity for the long-term sustainability of both.”