3 sustainability questions to Maya Sweileh and Annie NG, students at the Swiss Hotel Management School

Each year, a group of students of the world renown Swiss Hotel Management School is hosting “World of Hospitality”, a conference where hotel managers get together to discuss the future of the industry. Maya Sweileh, Student Event Director, and Annie NG, Communication Manager, both part of the conference planning team, are sharing their vision of sustainable hospitality.

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What is the place and role of sustainability in this year’s World of Hospitality event?

Sustainability is one of the core values in the upcoming World of Hospitality edition, we value this element and prioritize it by taking the initiative on many actions to maximize the value of sustainability to aim for an as eco-friendly event as we can. We have partnered with SQUAKE, to calculate and understand the emissions related to the event calculate and even compensate our leftover emissions despite taking sustainable actions (minimizing the usage of paper and transportation, supporting local products etc.), and create a WOH event as sustainable as possible.

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What does sustainable hospitality mean to you?

What sustainable hospitality means to us is to ensure all hospitality leaders are aware of the impacts of large amounts of Greenhouse gas emissions and take the initiative to implement applicable sustainable practices in their hospitality properties and avoiding greenwashing. Every little action makes a difference to the environment and planet, therefore we are trying to gather the power of the hospitality industry and take action to create a sustainable environment and future.

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How do you see the future of hospitality?

We can foresee that there will be more hospitality properties and travel itineraries that are willing to comply with sustainable actions. More hospitality properties are willing to take the responsibility of reducing their carbon emissions and supporting sustainable development. Technological development is a significant trend in hospitality. Solutions such as SQUAKE’s embedded carbon emission calculations, are invented for responsible hospitality properties to measure and manage their carbon footprint. From the market’s point of view, more customers are looking for a more sustainable way of staying in the hotel, therefore they tend to support sustainable enterprises, and hence more hotels are willing to take action on their sustainable development in the future.

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Ranked third best hospitality school in the world and second in Switzerland, SHMS combines the best of Switzerland’s rich hotelier heritage with tomorrow’s forward-thinking and innovative learning tools. They believe in the power of learning by doing and offer practical hands-on education across all aspects of their curriculum.

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