Week 41 - Sustainability in everything, except in politics

Sustainability certificates on booking, easyjet captures carbon now & climate reforms are getting a backlash!

TLDR: Too Long Didn’t Read

In this week's hospitality news, there are travel safety concerns in Israel, Airbnb outpaces hotels in supply and demand, Spain's real estate market is evolving, Easyjet joins Airbus' decarbonization initiative, and tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta (Facebook) enter the travel market with AI solutions. Additionally, oil prices have dropped due to decreased demand, and there are concerns about climate change reforms facing backlash. Academia explores the link between company culture and job performance. Finally, there are tips for combating cyberattacks in hospitality and obtaining a sustainability badge on Booking.com.

0. News snippets

Not important enough to expand on, but worth hearing about

Apparently, it is not safe to travel to Israel atm, thank you Euronews! | Airbnb/short term rental has overtaken hotels in both supply & demand. | SiteMinder report shows Latin America & Asia lead in Bleisure & digitalization. 60% of Indians intend to do bleisure this year vs 25% of Europeans, more here;

0.5 Follow up

Where we follow up on news from previous weeks

Bedbugs are now also found in Germany. From France to the UK and finally Germany. Eurotrip for bedbugs we suppose…

1. Main Hospitality News

Core news related to the industry

Spain's real estate market

The Spanish real estate market for hospitality is evolving. While only around 10% of hotel rooms are operated by “professional” players, more international investors are coming in, which might change the math ever so slightly. While the market has already fully recovered from 2019 an interesting trend is occurring. 2nd tier locations are catching up with major destinations like Barcelona & Madrid. Given the cost of market entry is much lower in these areas, it has become more attractive for investors to enter these locations. Finally, compared to Italy, Spain still has lower ADRs, yet higher standards for rooms. Mostly explained by Spain sourcing guests from Germany & UK, while Italy is more international with its US clientele. I guess Germans are a little more stingy demanding.

Easyjet is catching carbon

Easyjet is amongst the first to join the Airbus decarbonization program. Great right? The idea is that Airbus makes a partnership with a company that sucks carbon out of the air & captures it underground, hence all future CO2 emissions from easyjet would indeed be covered by that. Very unfortunate that these carbon capture plants are falling on mass to report on the actual carbon capture and their subsidies are being revoked, due to a failure to prove that they are actually capturing as much as they say they do.

Tech firms enter the travel market with AI

While the “conventional” hospitality tech businesses are struggling to create AI tools to implement in the service sector, Microsoft, Amazon & Meta (Facebook) have already released there’s. Amazon has released an AI that can help write and develop code without coding. As a result, several partnerships are arising, allowing travel companies to create their own AI chatbots that can help book and inquire about trips. Meta has integrated its new chatbot into WhatsApp and Facebook, also allowing users to communicate and organize their trips. Finally, Microsoft has partnered with Amadeus (major GDS) to create its own AI travel assistant, doing all the tasks mentioned before. Exciting to see how much traffic this ought to generate for the rest of us!

2. Externalities

Econimics, finance, geopolitics. All have an impact on the hospitality sector.

Oil prices drop

The oil prices have fallen. Why do you ask? Three reasons are mentioned at Handelsblatt. First, the demand for petrol has fallen, while the supply stayed the same, hence the falling prices. Second, the fear of growing interest rates is an additional de-motivator for b2b businesses to acquire oil, which indeed caused a decrease in oil demand yet again. Third, a random contract change. To elaborate there are massive oil contracts that agree on fixed oil prices in bulk for a limited time period. This time around a new contract kicked in which had a lower price per barrel. Indeed a completely random occurrence.

Climate change action? Maybe not so much!

Climate change reforms are creating a backlash worldwide. While climate change laws are being put in place, i.e. 25% of all carbon emissions are apparently taxed now, several democracies are showing an increasing movement to abandon these very reforms. On one side, global surveys show a majority of support for the needed climate action (70%+), on the other several countries were forced to decrease fuel tax & tone down their inspirations (i.e. UK moved their deadline of no fuel cars sold by another 5 years). This is apparently connected with the mostly right-wing electorate and is seen as overreaching of politicians by the public. For example, all Germans are being forced to change their heating systems to climate-friendly (heat pumps). This caused major issues since the German economy simply wasn’t able to switch all heating systems from one day to another, both financially & resource-wise. Overall we can summarize that a healthy democratic debate has started and we at Leportee hope that the final winning ideas will help us all move toward more sustainable, yet happy lives.

3. Academia

Scientific papers related to the topics above. For those who want to know for sure ;)

Company culture vs job performance

An exciting new study sourcing data specifically from the hospitality business has looked at company culture and how it impacts overall job performance. First and foremost, the core findings are that culture does impact job performance. Second of all, 4 main cultural traits were identified that had a positive impact on job results. These were vigor, absorption, trust, and experimentation. Hence, if you are in doubt about what cultural traits to promote, the results are as plain as they get!

4. Readables

Books, podcasts & the big stuff.

Understanding big data for normies

We have seen a lot of news on the topic of big data and how important it is to thrive in the future as a business. So here goes a big data recommendation. “The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data” is a good start for someone who perhaps isn’t too keen on the whole topic of probabilities & deviations.

5. Tips & Tricks Tools & SaaS

Any new software you can use? Industry tricks you missed?

How to fight cyber attacks, detailed interview

A very detailed interview outlining how to fight cyber attacks in hospitality has popped up over at “tageskarte”. Unfortunately, it is in German, nonetheless with modern AI tools the converting of video to text and subsequent translation shouldn’t present any challenges if you really care!

How to get a sustainability badge in Booking?

You might have read our past weekly reviews and saw that booking is entering a new classification with which hotels can be found. Sustainability. How can you get that honorable badge? Simple, booking chose its first partner to certify this and its “Sustonica”. More over here. The firm itself is over here.