Sustainability management in Swiss destinations

At the moment we are starting a project on sustainable management with four Swiss destinations at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. Why should the destinations implement a sustainable management system?

We believe that there is no other option for the Swiss tourism industry than to choose the path of sustainable development in tourism. On the one hand the responsibility towards the future generations does not offer any other option. On the other hand, we have shown in our study “Is there demand for sustainable tourism?” that there is a potential market size of 22% of tourists who named sustainability among the first three factors for their booking decision – ranging from 18 to 26 per cent, depending on the country and type of client. Furthermore, we believe that the younger generations are more aware of this topic. They hear about it in school and consider more often than older people aspects of sustainability in their daily life. This indicates that the issue will become more and more important.

Furthermore, the Swiss industry is not competitive on the price level due to its high production costs and especially due to the strong appreciation of the Swiss Franc. Therefore, Swiss tourism has to differentiate itself over good quality and sustainable products and benefit from its good starting position with regard to sustainability. However, for this purpose it is not sufficient to offer some sustainable products without having a holistic approach systematically considering sustainability at the level of the destination management organisation and implementing actions together with all actors in a destination. 

Dr Roger Wehrli

New kinds of tour operators in 2022?

Nowadays, the Internet is just there and in the western countries hardly anyone under the age of 55 can imagine living without being electronically connected. Customers like searching information for travelling. An increasing part of the guests/ passengers book online. There are many tools in place, which help the travellers to make their choice. Meta search-engines, map based information, recommender systems or review platforms etc. help the user … or not? Customers have the problem to find the relevant and trustworthy content today. Tour operators such as thomascook.com, expedia.com and intermediaries such as ab-in-den-urlaub.de as well as big brands of serviceproviders such as ACCOR can bridge the lack of trust. Given the assumption, that only a part of the vision of the Web 3.0 (semantic web) becomes true, customers might find relevant, trustworthy information easier and faster. Moreover the average age of the offline-bookers is increasing and more offline-bookers are dying out. In the age of semantic web, customers will be more likely to book online with the service provider. New business models and perspectives for tour operators and intermediaries (online or offline) must be discussed. It will be crucial to find out what the real added value of new business models is going to be.

Dr. Andreas Liebrich

New business models in tourism are needed

Executives in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry are faced with difficult times. The company has to grow, save costs and in the same time should take care about a sustainable development. Furthermore, todays challenges are much more complex then they used to be years ago. Tourism is one of the classical cross-sectional industries where many topics are touched; mobility, sustainability, architecture, urban and regional planning, financing, etc. As a result, today challenges can’t be solved independently. It needs a common understanding of what has to be done and furthermore, a common action is needed to make sure that the taken actions have the expected effects. In other words a global approach, a cooperation or “one voice” (as Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the South African tourism minister calls it) is needed (http://vimeo.com/23266801). If we don’t take this seriously, the travel, tourism and hospitality industry will never get the power it needs and will never show the necessary results it should.

To make that happen, companies and CEO’s have to rethink the existing business models they used during the last 20 years. New business models have to be discussed, evaluated and than implemented in the industry and companies. Therefore, the World Tourism Forum Lucerne takes care about these issues and brings together the relevant persons to discuss about these new business models. In the last years a lot of top level platforms and summits concentrated on the discussion about new business models such as World Tourism Forum Lucerne 2011 (http://www.wtflucerne.org/programme-2011/) or World Economic Forum in 2012 (http://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2012). Who else should be as well present to such discussions about the future challenges than the ones who have to face them: the talents of the next generation? That is the reason why World Tourism Forum Lucerne concentrates so much on the talent management issue (http://www.wtflucerne.org/storage/Young_Talents_Concept_e_2013.pdf.).

 Prof Martin Barth, General Manager World Tourism Forum Lucerne

Sustainability in our daily business

Nowadays, sustainability should be part of our daily thinking. However, the actions towards a more sustainable tourism, for example in a hotel or in a destination, do very often not reflect the positive attitudes towards sustainability of most people. Most touristic actors do not implement broad sustainability programmes. Instead, they take some isolated actions which fall short of the holistic concept of the three pillars of sustainability, i.e. ecology, society and economy. Most of the time touristic actors focus on actions which increase their short-term financial profit. That’s one reason why we often observe measures towards better energy efficiency because a lower resource use directly and immediately lowers costs. However, the (long-run) benefits of others actions are often not recognised in the industry, and sometimes it is even feared that actions towards sustainability decrease guest comfort. But, if we take for example social responsibility seriously and have high working standards in our businesses, the employees are more satisfied. This will directly result in a higher guest satisfaction which again increases the repeat visit rate and therefore the demand for this specific product. This example should show you that the short-run expenditures of higher working standards will be outweighed by the long-term benefits.

It is one of the aims of the WTFL to show the industry that sustainability is an important issue and should be an integral part of our daily business. The WFTL wants to contribute to this discussion by discussing the benefits of sustainable tourism and increasing the knowledge about sustainable tourism. 

Dr. Roger Wehrli

Talent Management on the top of every CEO’s agenda in 2012

The war for talents is raging everywhere. It becomes very obvious nowadays, that talent management has to be a priority for the industry as well as for the academic world. Therefore, World Tourism Forum Lucerne has been focusing on talents as one of its five strategic pillars since its first edition in 2009. The forum’s goal is to recruit the most potential young talents of the partner universities and to link them with the top managers of the forum by inviting them to Lucerne.
According to a study of PwC with over 1’000 CEOs, two-thirds of them believe they are facing a limited supply of potential talents. As a result, talent recruiting and talent retention are at the top of the agenda for global CEOs. Another study with CEOs, conducted by Korn/Ferry international in 2011, comes to similar conclusions. The tourism, leisure and hospitality industry faces significant talent challenges. Many leadership teams have a lack of diversity and only few have experiences in different industries. The senior executives of the tourism, leisure and hospitality industry are in danger of becoming homogenous if they don’t perform in attracting talents from other industries by offering them what they really desire. These desires, expectations and wishes of future talents were analysed in a third study of PwC and the World Tourism Forum Lucerne conducted with over 800 tourism and hospitality students of the Forum’s partner universities in 2010. It became obvious that a healthy work-life-balance, variety in daily work and career options are the most important expectations of the future’s top management. 

http://www.wtflucerne.org/media-2013/

www.pwc.ch/ceosurvey

http://www.kempinski.com/en/Press%20Room/Pages/KempinskiCareerDay2012.aspx

Christine Herzer, Talent Management Director, World Tourism Forum Lucerne