Suc­cess­ful sus­tain­able tour­ism is not only about envir­on­ment­al, social, and eco­nom­ic imper­at­ives; it’s about mar­ket­ing too! In oth­er words, suc­cess­ful sus­tain­ab­il­ity strategies solve prob­lems for cus­tom­ers. So argues James McGregor, Founder & CEO of Blue Tribe, in this “GT” Insight.

I have a con­fes­sion to make. Some­times when I travel for busi­ness or pleas­ure I leave the lights on in my room, leave the spare key in the energy sav­ing switch so the air con­di­tion­ing keeps run­ning and the room will be cool when I get back from a run, take showers that are longer than three minutes, and some­times I even ask for fresh tow­els even though the little sign in the bath­room tells me I can save water by just hanging them up.

Every time I do this I feel a pang of guilt because I also run a busi­ness that helps com­pan­ies and gov­ern­ment design and imple­ment sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els that deliv­er pos­it­ive social and envir­on­ment­al impacts for the com­munity and plan­et.

So, the ques­tion we need to ask of our sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives is that if a com­mit­ted sus­tain­ab­il­ity enthu­si­ast like me doesn’t par­ti­cip­ate in our ini­ti­at­ives then what do the rest of our cus­tom­ers think about our sus­tain­ab­il­ity efforts?

The answer to this ques­tion is that most of your cus­tom­ers don’t think about it at all.

Sustainable tourism – what your customers think

Ask any of your cus­tom­ers if they seek out sus­tain­able products and ser­vices the chances are that they will say yes. A 2015 Cone Communications/Ebiquity Glob­al CSR Study found that 84% seek out respons­ible products whenev­er pos­sible with 81% of con­sumers say­ing they will make per­son­al sac­ri­fices to address social, envir­on­ment­al issues. A 2015 study by Booking.com also found that 52% of trav­el­lers are likely to choose a des­tin­a­tion based on its envir­on­ment­al impact.

But dig a little deep­er and you will also likely find that this sen­ti­ment doesn’t trans­late into action. A 2015 Neilsen sur­vey found that des­pite grow­ing con­sumer demands for eco-friendly products, only 10% of con­sumers pur­chased them.

So what is actu­ally going on here?

This is what has been described as the val­ues-action gap. In oth­er words, what people tell you is not what they do. Your cus­tom­ers don’t lose sleep wor­ry­ing about cli­mate change or how they can save energy or water des­pite what they might tell you. These issues are imma­ter­i­al to the reas­on they decided to stay at your hotel or buy one of your tours.

Your cus­tom­ers don’t think about your sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives because they don’t solve a prob­lem or a need that is import­ant to them. When they choose your busi­ness for their hol­i­day they are look­ing to relax and unwind, escape their mundane jobs and do some­thing excit­ing, have exper­i­ences they can brag about with their friends, or cre­ate amaz­ing memor­ies.

What you can do about it

One of the most effect­ive ways to deliv­er a suc­cess­ful sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ive is to design your envir­on­ment­al or social ini­ti­at­ive to solve your customer’s prob­lems. There are three types of prob­lems cus­tom­ers are try­ing to solve; extern­al prob­lems (the job they are try­ing to get done), intern­al prob­lems (the pains or frus­tra­tions they feel), and philo­soph­ic­al prob­lems (the things they believe in).

Extern­al prob­lems (jobs) rep­res­ent what cus­tom­ers are try­ing to get done in their work and in their lives, as expressed in their own words e.g. “have a hol­i­day”, “vis­it my fam­ily”, “attend a con­fer­ence”.

Intern­al prob­lems (pains) describe bad out­comes, risks, and obstacles and how these prob­lems make them feel e.g. “I just want to relax and unwind”, “I have a busy sched­ule on this busi­ness trip so I need quiet place to chill out and be left alone to recov­er from my flight”, “I have worked hard to be able to retire and I deserve this”.

Philo­soph­ic­al prob­lems (gains) describe high­er out­comes a cus­tom­er might want to achieve and often relate to val­ues e.g. “make a bet­ter future for my kids”, “be on the win­ning team”.

You will deliv­er a suc­cess­ful sus­tain­ab­il­ity pro­gram when your sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ive maps to meet your cus­tom­er prob­lems i.e. when your sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ive solves one or more of the intern­al, extern­al, and philo­soph­ic­al prob­lems that are import­ant to your cus­tom­er.

Suc­cess­ful sus­tain­able tour­ism maps product to cus­tom­er prob­lems and needs

For example, my fam­ily had the pleas­ure of hav­ing a hol­i­day at the Jean Michel Cous­teau resort in Savusavu, Fiji. For this trip, my extern­al prob­lem was that I wanted to take my fam­ily on hol­i­days but I also wanted my young chil­dren to vis­it a loc­a­tion where they could see some of the nat­ur­al beauty of our world. My intern­al prob­lem was that I wanted to unwind from a busy work sched­ule, spend qual­ity time with my wife, and wanted to be sure the chil­dren were safe. My philo­soph­ic­al prob­lem was that I believed we should choose a des­tin­a­tion that had a light touch on the envir­on­ment.

The team from Jean Michel Cous­teau were able to solve my extern­al prob­lem by provid­ing a hol­i­day exper­i­ence in one of the most stun­ning parts of the world. They solved my intern­al prob­lem by offer­ing an amaz­ing kids club so my wife and I could have din­ner as a couple whilst the kids were hunt­ing for crabs and learn­ing about how to care for the envir­on­ment with the res­id­ent mar­ine bio­lo­gist “Johnny” and we felt com­fort­able that they were safe. Finally, the resort’s val­ues solved my philo­soph­ic­al prob­lem.

We were able to help pro­tect the loc­al mar­ine park, help rehab­il­it­ate the giant clam pop­u­la­tion, con­trib­ute to loc­al social impact pro­jects and edu­cate our chil­dren about how to care for the plan­et without once hav­ing to think about the resort’s sus­tain­ab­il­ity pro­jects because it was fully integ­rated into our exper­i­ence and at the same time solved our extern­al, intern­al, and philo­soph­ic­al needs and desires.

When we design our sus­tain­ab­il­ity plans we always set out with good inten­tions. We want to make the world a bet­ter place and try to do this by redu­cing energy con­sump­tion or try­ing to save water. But if our sus­tain­ab­il­ity strategies fail then we do not actu­ally deliv­er the pos­it­ive envir­on­ment­al or social out­comes we believe in.

Deliv­er­ing a suc­cess­ful sus­tain­able tour­ism ini­ti­at­ive is not about doing good things for the world, it is about solv­ing your cus­tom­ers needs in an envir­on­ment­ally or socially respons­ible way. Doing good things for the world just hap­pens to be a con­sequence of doing this suc­cess­fully.

Download

To help map sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives against cus­tom­er problems/needs Blue Tribe has put togeth­er a free guide on “How to Design a Value Pro­pos­i­tion for your Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Strategy”.

Video

The fol­low­ing You­Tube video is what inspired “GT” Blog to invite James to con­trib­ute:

About the author

James McGregor

When his dreams of becom­ing an ice truck­er were crushed by cli­mate change, James McGregor decided to become Chief Sus­tain­ab­il­ity Innov­at­or, Founder and CEO of the Blue Tribe Com­pany and work with lead­ing com­pan­ies and gov­ern­ments to design and imple­ment suc­cess­ful sus­tain­ab­il­ity strategies using innov­at­ive tech­niques developed in Sil­ic­on Val­ley.

When he is not busy help­ing his cli­ents to save the plan­et or provid­ing the key­note speech at a sus­tain­ab­il­ity con­fer­ence, James can usu­ally be found out­doors par­ti­cip­at­ing in an adven­ture race or triath­lon, sup­port­ing the loc­al surf lifesav­ing club, and spend­ing time with his wife and two young chil­dren.

The Blue Tribe Com­pany draws upon a glob­al net­work of 10,000+ pro­fes­sion­als to provide man­age­ment con­sult­ing expert­ise to cli­ents all over the world spe­cial­ising in sus­tain­able busi­ness, busi­ness innov­a­tion and strategy. Their ser­vices include sus­tain­able busi­ness strategy, innov­a­tion, busi­ness fin­ance, busi­ness mod­el innov­a­tion, pro­ject man­age­ment, digit­al mar­ket­ing, intel­lec­tu­al prop­erty, tech­no­logy com­mer­cial­isa­tion, and gov­ernance.