The Business Case for Sustainability – What’s in it for you?

I had the opportunity to meet Bob Willard, author of several books including most recently The Sustainability Champions Guidebook (How to Transform Your Company), The Next Sustainability Wave, and The Sustainability Advantage.

Bob’s presentation was straight-forward.  If you can get an opportunity to see his presentation, do so.  It is well worth it.  I went twice, to both of his presentations, because the information was so compactly presented.

I interviewed Bob today after the presentation, because I was inspired by his presentation, and interested in his perspectives about sustainability and tourism.  Grab a coffee, or a juice and put your feet up.  This guy has some really neat ideas.  Check out his website Sustainability Advantage. In particular, see the 90 second video introduction from Bob personally.  Well done!

Interview with Bob:

Download the interview

Bob has helped me to articulate  a framework that helps me to bridge my passion for tourism with the business case for sustainability.  I hope that this interview will help you to shift your business towards sustainability.  The planet needs you to do it.  Climate change needs us to act in more innovative ways.  And, wouldn’t it be great to be able to do it in ways that actually increase your profits.

Sharing

What are some suggestions that you have about improvements in your tourism business that have led you forward on the pathway to sustainability?   I would be really interested in hearing your suggestions or examples, so that we can help our entire tourism industry to begin taking the small steps toward sustainability.

Travel and tourism will be tremendously affected by the outcomes of the Copenhagen Climate negotiations, as well as by forthcoming cap and trade legislation that will be passed both in the US and subsequently in Canada.  Not IF, but WHEN.  I think that it behooves all of us to start building in a smart, small-steps approach to sustainability into our annual business plan for our tourism companies.  What do you think?

Edge of the Wedge Tourism Training in Newfoundland is a cutting edge experiential travel learning experience for the tourism industry.  This podcast marks the end of 5 full years of delivering this course.  Celes, Nancy and I toast the 500 operators who have participated in this training experience.

In this version of the podcast we get some great questions from participants and even engage an audience member in responding to one of them.

• What is your opinion of changing the name of a business when undergoing a major renovation and change in ownership: Christie Wheeler, (Hotel Stephenville, Stephenville, NL)
• How do you motivate your experiential tourism providers and story tellers if it is not economically feasible to provide the experiences you develop? Sandra McDonald (Cape Breton Island)
• How to go about rolling out experiences in a bilingual community? How to handle the marketing and delivery of experiences in bridging language differences in a francophone/bilingual community? (Merideth Casey, Bathurst NB)

Thanks to Paul McGraw, (Miramichi Kitchen Party, Mirimachi, NB) for sharing his story with bilingual tourism experiences in response to the francophone question.

Nancy, Celes and Todd respond to questions from attendees at Edge of the Wedge 19 in Gros Morne, NL.

Discussion focuses on:

• how to rethink the business model for an underused tourism facility,
• finding new partners in your community to help create and deliver new tourism experiences,
• the keys to integrating older workers into your tourism attraction, business or regional tourism centre.

In travel, getting there, can be an important part of the travel experience. Justin Lafontaine has founded the Bike Train, an initiative to get travelers and their bikes to destinations across Ontario on the train. Justin has a number of pilot projects underway using a special rail car designated for bikes with scheduled departures to cities large and small across Ontario.

Plans are underway to greatly expand this climate-friendly travel initiative in 2010.

Learn more about BikeTrain.ca by checking out this conversation with Todd and Justin.

Download this mp3 podcast.

On June 18th, I received a call from CBC Radio in Cape Breton.  It was Wendy Martin.  She has been following the evolution and development of the Fortress of Louisburg’s imaginative and unique 18th century “period cooking classes” about cuisine and lifestyles program that provides visitors with unique opportunities to experience food, cuisine, history, and cultural traditions at the fortress.  These programs are currently being tested out and evaluated.

Wendy was also enquiring about what experiential tourism is, and interviewed Celes Davar, one of the facilitators for the Edge of the Wedge experiential tourism training program offered by the Gros Morne Institute for Sustainable Tourism.  You can listen to the interview, in which examples are provided and an explanation of some of the key ingredients underlying experiential tourism, why it works, and what visitors are looking for in an experience.

You can also listen to the interview that Wendy does live onsite at the Fortress of Louisburg’s cooking class at the engineer’s house in the fortress, where they have been baking pastry and are then sampling it.  This new Culinary Institute combines history with haute cuisine. Innovative.  A chef from New Brunswick is featured in this program.

Both of these interviews are Real Player file links from the CBC Cape Breton website.  To access them, go directly to the CBC Radio Cape Breton website, and scroll down to June 18, where the links to the audio interviews are provided.

Nancy and Todd chat about current trends in travel and tourism and use the question, “So What? Who cares?” to help distill the relevance of the news for tourism businesses and travel assocations.

Download “So What?” – June 27, 2009

• Google City Maps can’t meet traveler needs without local knowledge.
• The one thing that matters – Your Customer, and what they need.
• Computers will never replace the human element on the ground in your community. Make your own Maps.
• Nancy shares her cultural travel experiences and guided tours of South Korea including the People’s Market.
• Finding value in travel experiences is in the people who animate the experience – people will pay for personalized experiences.
• What is authenticity? How does a travel business provide an authentic travel experience.
• Understand current trends by listening to Web 2.0 conversations.

Download the Wooden Monkey episode

On this episode of the Tourism Café, Celes and Todd are in the Nashville airport with a number of Canadian presenters returning to Canada after The Climate Project Summit, a gathering of presenters of Al Gore’s Climate Change presentation.

While spending a few days with Mr. Gore, David Suzuki and other inspiring leaders was great, what was most exciting was meeting a number of terrific Canadians who are leaders in helping other Canadians understand Climate Change and ways that communities, businesses, and individuals can make a difference.

We invite you to meet one of those people who is making a difference.

Lil MacPhearson is owner and founder of The Wooden Monkey, a fabulous Halifax Restaurant serving up delicious local fare and rich dining experiences. Listen to her story about how the issue of food security prompted her to open a restaurant dedicated to engaging local farmers and organic food providers in order to deliver people real food.

Todd, Celes and Nancy answer questions from Atlantic Canada tourism operators on the challenges of establishing experiential tourism experiences.

Download Edge 18 Tourism Café podcast Live from GMIST Edge of the Wedge in Rocky Harbour Newfoundland, April 24, 2009.

@celesdavar, @nancyarsenault and @toddlucier have been hosting the Tourism Café podcasts for about 5 months. The whole idea was dreamed up at Edge of the Wedge last November. Today, we gathered with course #17 participants to record a live episode of the Café at the Ocean View Motel in Rocky Harbour NL

Download podcast here.

We got lots of great questions from the audience and had perhaps our best discussion yet of the challenges faced by communities in growing Experiential Tourism. Some great advice here.

Links

• Innovate or Die – blog post

[photo - Natalie Lucier, GMIST]

World Travelers Podcast focuses on Sustainability

Download Podcast

Links from Nancy Arsenault

Info on conference sustainability measures:

• http://www.childnature.ca/webinar/
• article on the Bateman Centre:
• Royal Roads article on Bateman Centre
• A message from Bob Bateman

Regional DMOs that are collaborating and examining ways to partner and strengthen their contributions

Public:

• http://www.hellobc.com/en-CA/PopularAreas/VancouverCoastandMountains.htm
• http://www.hellobc.com/en-CA/RegionsCities/VancouverIsland.htm?S=N

Corporate:

• http://www.vcmbc.com/page.cfm/9534
• http://www.tourismvi.ca/

Links from Celes Davar:

The TIAC Canadian Charter for Sustainable Tourism (Draft – For Discussion):
http://www.tiac-aitc.ca/english/documents/advocacy/2008/canadian_charter_sustain_tourism.pdf

The Climate Project Builds Momentum
http://www.theclimateproject.org/tcpnews.php?id=485

Notes from Celes Davar:

• There are many new opportunities for tourism operators to ensure that sustainable tourism becomes fully integrated into their operations.
• Customers are going to be coming much more knowledgeable about sustainable technologies (wind, bio-fuels, pv, solar). How will we make sure that our operations reflect customer expectations?
• Todd Lucier and Celes Davar will be joining 100 other Climate Project Presentors from Canada and 400 Americans with Al Gore at the North American Summit in Nashville, TN, to learn about techniques for effective advocacy of governments to pass climate change legislation this year.
• 2009 is the year of the Copenhagen Treaty. The TIAC Sustainable Tourism Charter should be part of Canada’s position.
• The Canadian Tourism Commission has a new $20.0 Million stimulus package boost that is focused on a domestic marketing program. A great opportunity for tourism operators to link their new experiences to the EQ, and national domestic marketing initiatives that focus on great Canadian experiences.

Links from Todd Lucier:

• Save Food on Twitter
• Save Food Wiki - lots of resources presented at SxSW in Austin, March 2009
• Follow Todd’s liveblog at ClimateCafé.org from the G20 Summit in London, UK, April 1-2, 2009