In a world where tourism is growing tremendously, establishing sustainable local sourcing in the hospitality industry is no longer an option. The dire repercussions of a lack of sustainable local sourcing hospitality can already be felt across the global ecosystem, with the hotel sector accounting for around 1% of global carbon emissions, which will be higher as the industry grows.
Sustainable local sourcing hospitality can significantly reduce global carbon emissions, among other benefits. Therefore, hotels, restaurants, lodging facilities, and other sectors across the hospitality industry have a significant role in implementing sustainable local sourcing hospitality and achieving their sustainable goals. Explore sustainable local sourcing hospitality, its benefits, how hotels are implementing it, and how it’s contributing to a hotel’s sustainable goals.
What Is Sustainable Local Sourcing Hospitality?
Sustainable local sourcing hospitality involves sourcing food locally to minimize environmental impact, support local farmers, and promote social responsibility. Local sourcing typically refers to purchasing or procuring food and ingredients within a specific geographical area.
As most people increasingly prioritize sustainable practices, sustainable local sourcing hospitality has become a major aspect that hoteliers must adopt. This is important because it helps protect the environment, save costs, engage with local communities, and maintain the industry’s long-term viability.
Benefits of Sustainable Local Sourcing Hospitality
Sustainable local sourcing hospitality isn’t just about following rules or saving money. It’s about doing what’s suitable for the environment and the society. It comes with several other benefits like:
Reduced Environmental Impact
Sustainable local sourcing hospitality means adopting strategies that minimize carbon footprint across the entire food supply chain. One of the significant ways it reduces environmental impact is by reducing transport emissions. When you get further into depending on suppliers who prioritize renewable energy sources and efficient transportation, this will help reduce environmental impact.
Sustainable local sourcing hospitality also reduces food waste, as food travels a lesser distance, so there’s less likelihood of spoiling. Besides that, sourcing food locally avoids using environmentally unfriendly packaging and transportation practices used when foods are transported over long distances. This further helps protect the environment.
Economic Benefits to Local Farmers and Businesses
Sourcing food from local farmers has numerous economic benefits. It helps keep money within your community and supports local businesses. Therefore, farmers have a high chance of earning a more positive net farm income, maintaining a lower operating expense ratio, and increasing their farms’ viability.
Sourcing food locally also brings another economic benefit, the multiplier effect. This is an economic phenomenon in which increased consumer spending within a community results in a more significant income for that community. Once a hotel or restaurant buys from a local farmer, the farmer will spend more with the area merchants. This provides greater support for other local businesses and organizations.
Job Creation
Sourcing food locally also helps create local jobs compared with sourcing from wholesale channels. This process starts at the farms where the produce has been sourced and continues through suppliers and other workforce involved across the supply chain until the products reach local hotels and restaurants.
Enhanced Guest Experience
When you source from local farmers, you expect to have access to products of superior quality. Most local farmers utilize organic and sustainable farming methods, which means their products are free from pesticides and chemicals. They also use sustainable practices like natural pest control and crop rotation. This maintains healthy soil and guarantees consistent flavor with their produce.
Furthermore, since the produce is freshly harvested and transported to hotels and restaurants within the shortest time possible, it retains more flavor and nutrients than imported produce. Therefore, hotels will get nutritious and better-tasting produce.
Drive Customer Loyalty
As sustainability becomes more popular, hotels and restaurants that source their food supplies locally have a better chance of driving their customers’ loyalty and more into their business. They know that the food they’re serving is grown locally. This practice helps reduce carbon emissions by eliminating transportation over long distances. Therefore, they will be more inclined to hotels and restaurants that adopt sustainable local sourcing hospitality than those that don’t.
HOW ARE HOTELS IMPLEMENTING SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES?
Sustainable local sourcing hospitality goes beyond adopting practices that protect the environment. It also includes money and society. Therefore, hotels and restaurants have adopted various measures that cut across multiple aspects of their food supply network to ensure a sustainable supply chain. These strategies include the following:
Forming a Green Team
Implementing sustainable hotel practices requires different expertise. Therefore, most hotels and restaurants aiming to implement sustainable practices have created and trained a team of experts to help them deploy and guide others through the various practices they should follow.
Paperless
According to statistics from the Global Forest Resource Association (GFRA), up to 100,000 trees are cut down to make paper every day. Therefore, by going paperless and adopting digital practices, hotels, and restaurants have played a significant role in sustainability.
Investing in Renewable Energy
Hotels are using many renewable energy alternatives to ensure sustainability. These include solar heaters, Combined Heating and Power (CHP), high-efficiency HVAC systems, LED lights, occupancy sensors, and more. These significantly reduce power consumption, which ultimately ensures sustainability.
Contribution of Local Sourcing to a Hotel's Sustainable Goals
Many leading hotel groups have been at the forefront of ensuring they meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals through local sourcing and other practices. Among these are ensuring that they prioritize sensitizing local farmers to sustainable farming practices, implementing incentives for farmers to maintain sustainable farming practices, and ensuring that their suppliers adopt sustainable practices to reduce transportation emissions.
One of the solutions provided by the Pacific Asia Travel Association to ensure sustainable hospitality is sourcing more food seasonally and locally since it reduces the time that imported food travels, leading to less spoilage. It also provides crucial incentives for local sourcing to strengthen customer engagement, save costs, and enhance customer engagement.
Another way that local sourcing contributes to hotels’ sustainable goals is by establishing local networks with local farmers, hotels, workforce, government agencies, and other key stakeholders. This message has been strongly argued and laid out in the Futouris Manual, Sustainable Food. It suggests practices that food and beverage managers can use to meet their hotels’ sustainable goals. Strong networks help overcome specific obstacles to achieving sustainable goals.
Implement Sustainable Local Sourcing Hospitality With NewGen Advisory
Developing a local sourcing strategy that will help you achieve sustainable goals in hospitality requires a properly measured process, investment in time, and access to the right resources and skilled experts.
At NewGen Advisory, we can help you implement sustainable local sourcing hospitality through our experience in brokerage in hospitality and lodging assets. We will provide helpful insight into using local sourcing and other strategies to achieve your sustainable goals. Contact us today to learn how we can help.