In mid-April, members of our Sustainability Network Group came together for the third session in our series: Sustainable Solutions in Action. This session looked beyond ambition and strategy and focused on how organisations can deliver measurable sustainability outcomes – from carbon data and events reporting, to tackling resistance to change.
With contributions from Sophia-Bella Pinnock at Clarity, John Stokoe from Village Hotels and Andrew Perolls from Greengage, the conversation demonstrated a shared truth: progress happens when data, people and decisions align.
The ESG journey of village hotels
Guest speaker John Stokoe, ESG Manager at Village Hotels, started the session by sharing his experience of maintaining and achieving sustainability goals while growing a nationwide hospitality chain.
Village Hotels’ ESG journey started from within, with its own people. By setting up a sustainability steering group made up of executive members and staff from across the business, it ensured strong involvement and oversight from a broad range of functions. However, even with this steering group, Village ensured that every hotel had a ‘Sustainability Star’, helping to maintain a high standard of environmental practices.
This then helped shape its three pillars today:
- Stay Green – reducing environmental impact and carbon emissions
- People – health, wellbeing and inclusive culture
- Community – strong local engagement and partnership
Through its Stay Green pillar, Village has been working hard over the last six years to ensure all of its properties are as green as possible. This has been achieved through various building-efficiency initiatives, having identified where it can make the biggest impact and exercise the most control.
This involved:
- Transitioning to 100% REGO‑backed renewable electricity.
- Removing gas from new extensions through air source heat pumps.
- Partnership with Ionity to install ultra-rapid EV chargers (350kW).
- 20 sites already live, with the full estate rollout ongoing.
- SECR reporting embedded into financial statements.
- Using third-party accreditations (EcoSmart, GreenTourism, BREEAM, HCMI) to provide independent verification and avoid greenwashing.
However, John acknowledged that none of this work is credible without the data to support it, saying:
“Data is key… [it] helps us with our consumption reduction strategies,” and “we can be quite reactive in terms of… we don’t have to wait for the bill to come through, we can actually see what’s happening.” – John Stokoe, Village Hotels
A final key learning shared was the value of better Scope3 data. Moving from spend-based estimates to supplier-specific data (for example, on waste) resulted in significantly more accurate emissions reporting and, in some cases, substantial reductions compared with previous estimates.
Data transparency: The hidden key in meetings and events
Sophia-Bella Pinnock from Clarity then explored how tracking meetings and events carbon data provides valuable insights for creating tangible changes in both reporting and event delivery. Using anonymised case studies, Sophia-Bella highlighted how tracking and breaking down emissions by activity, such as travel, accommodation, food, energy and drinks, alongside delegate numbers, means that over time you can see where action matters most and where attention should be focused.
Using the anonymised case-study data, it quickly became clear that food was a consistent major emissions driver, revealing opportunities for change such as moving towards plant-forward menus, working with vendors who prioritise local, seasonal food, and minimising food waste. This can be achieved by working with the venue or food-waste prevention organisations and ensuring delegate numbers are accurate to prevent an excess of food being prepared.
Alongside food, instead of tracking total emissions alone -which, although valuable, does not allow for tailored decisions - it is also important to track CO2e per delegate. This provides a more accurate measure of efficiency and progress over time, while allowing for better comparisons across varied events.
“By looking at the CO2 per delegate figures, that shows whether those events are becoming more or less efficient over time.” – Sophia-Bella Pinnock, Clarity
Sophia-Bella then finished by highlighting the importance of communication alongside data tracking. Once you have access to your meetings and events data and can see what changes need to be made, the next step is to ensure you take your delegates on that journey. By stating, during the dietary-requirements question, or on a sign at the food table on the day, that you are taking steps towards a lower-carbon food menu, there is likely to be less resistance to change than many organisations fear.
Overcoming resistance to change: Winning hearts and minds
The final section, led by Andrew Perolls, Founder and CEO of Greengage, discussed the important topic of resistance to change. Drawing on his experience in the industry and collaborating with a wide variety of organisations, Andrew noted that staff do not automatically resist sustainability – they resist poorly explained change.
Andrew observed that people are often resistant to change for fairly basic reasons, such as it disrupting familiar habits. People do not respond well to change, especially when it has not been communicated effectively and when it feels as though it is being imposed upon rather than introduced as a collaborative change.
In order to help your travellers adopt change successfully, Andrew highlighted some key takeaways:
- Setting out clear rules and policy changes
- Robust travel policies should prioritise avoiding unnecessary travel
- Encouraging rail over air
- Limiting short-haul/one-day trips
- Using the technology
- Such as our air-to-rail nudge in ClarityGo
- Using relatable messaging that the traveller can identify through the use of equivalencies that help put the travel’s impact into perspective (i.e. this flight is the same as charging your phone for 29days)
- Prioritising hotels with eco-certifications
- Transparent data and progress reporting – to track focus areas
- Visible leadership role-modelling
- Leading from the top-down
“[Senior leaders] need to be seen taking trains, skipping unnecessary travel, travelling in the same cabin as staff…it’s about really reframing travel so that…when changes are made, [staff] get it and they understand, of course, this is just normal practice.” – Andrew Perolls, Greengage
Andrew helped finish the session by concluding that sustainability should be designed as the easy, default choice, not an inconvenience.
Final Takeaways
From the presenters’ sessions and the invaluable insights shared, it was clear that data quality and transparency set the baseline for effective sustainability action, and that collaboration helps to influence the behaviour changes desired among travellers. However, it is important to underpin that collaboration through open communication, explaining to travellers why changes are happening, demonstrating the impact of their actions and decisions, and helping staff feel involved in the process.
If you’re a customer of ours or interested in learning more about our sustainability offering, please do get in touch.
