Sustainability Challenges And Opportunities From An Owner's Perspective - Michelle Jensen Session

Josiah: 0:00

I'm always fascinated by how different threads of people's careers connect. You mentioned studying environmental studies. You grew up in this hospitality business and a big part of your work at Aquarius now is helping others with sustainability. I wonder if you could speak a little bit to the opportunity that you see there. I know that's not the only thing that you do, but it seems like a big focus and I wonder if you could help us understand a little bit some of the opportunities that you see there.

Michelle: 0:27

I've spoken about this on panels and at conferences, and I have a unique background in that, although I grew up with developer parents, I grew up in Monterey Bay, which is a beautiful place to grow up, and I had a teacher, Mrs Green ironically - first grade - who had us collect pennies for the rainforest to protect biodiversity, and then later I had a third-grade teacher, Mrs Blaisner, who was working on the Monterey Bay Sanctuary, which protects the canyon in the Monterey Bay. So I was at a school that loved nature, that wanted to protect it, and my father's biggest fear as me as a child, he was afraid I was going to become a lawyer for the Sierra Club and so, as a developer, that terrified him. I did not do that, but I did go on to study environmental science and I've always walked this line of being a small business owner and, at the same time, wanting to work on sustainability because big picture. I saw there is this need and part of the journey is I ended up working at UC San Diego for the Sustainability Solutions Institute, which was an entity that tried to bring together different sustainability scientists from all the different disciplines from all over the world to work on big picture issues. So we were tackling specifically climate change and the impact on water availability, and hosting conferences with people from all over the world Nobel Prize-winning scientists, and what I learned in some of that environment was being surrounded by these amazing minds. It's very ivory tower and sometimes it gets really complicated when it doesn't need to be, and there are different skill sets that are needed to create change, and my place in this was always. I may not be a Nobel Prize-winning scientist I definitely don't have that mind but I know how to put it into action, and I think it's that background and operations where that big picture scientific knowledge is fantastic, but how do you apply it on the ground? What does it look like in real life? And so, even as a child, I would have conversations with my father my developer father about you know, if you could make a car that does 50 miles per gallon, why wouldn't you? And dad, why would you put trash in your water that you're going to drink? Sustainability, I get it. It can be very polarizing. However, it just makes sense, and as business owners, we do a lot of things that are sustainable, that we may not even realize, and we're doing it because it helps our bottom line right. So, for example, landscaping. My mom would drive the neighborhoods of our hotels to look at the different plants and see which ones are thriving, and which ones do well here. What's natural to this environment? Mostly because she didn't want to have to replace the plants every year, and so a lot of those plants are water tolerant. She was doing sustainable landscaping without even realizing it, and it's the same thing with the way that we run our businesses you buy products that are going to last so that you don't have to replace them, and then that doesn't end up in the landfill because that affects your bottom line. So part of what we're doing at Aquarius is we're celebrating what people are already doing, and then we're helping navigate some of the complexity of the sustainability web. Bookingcom just put out this fantastic report with 32 steps for sustainability and they have a great list of all the different accreditations and there's a lot. I've had conversations with hoteliers who feel need to be certified because they're applying for RFPs for major companies for business travel like Google and Meta, and they don't know where to begin and they don't blame them because it is incredibly complicated when you look at the site, and so my background is unique because I can help navigate some of those challenges right. It doesn't have to be as complicated as it is. You start with what you're already doing and then you build on it.

Josiah: 4:29

I love it. I would love to hear how you define or how you think about sustainability because it seems clear, but I think I hear different people talk about it in different ways. And you mentioned this 30-plus-step checklist. That booking put out feels like a lot, but how do you define sustainability?

Michelle: 4:47

That is an amazing question and you know what? I don't think I've ever been asked that For me, sustainability is a collection of actions to lessen your footprint on the earth, and it can be anything from water to electricity, to the products that you're buying, the product products you're designing with. And for me, the other part of this is when I was studying environmental science at UC Santa Barbara. I cared about the planet and I cared about nature, but what really fascinated me was the relationship between the planet and people, and that's where sustainability comes in. It's this intersection of how people interact with the environment, and it's a complicated web, and so it is easy to get really lost in those details, because there's so many of them, but there's so much that we can do, and collectively you add up all those little efforts and it makes a difference.

Josiah: 5:47

I love it. I wonder if we could talk a bit about the misconceptions around sustainability and specifically, let's talk to owners and investors. You own hotels, so I feel like you understand this world and you have this very credible position to speak from. In your experience, both as an owner and investor yourself and people that you interact with, what do you think the misconceptions are around sustainability?

Michelle: 6:13

There's a lot of them. We actually just did an article on this in Hertelier. One of them is that it's expensive, and in reality, yes, it can be really expensive. It depends on what you're going after but it'll also save you money. That's number one that it's expensive. Number two that it's complicated. Right, it doesn't have to be. You can have people that help you with that. Number three that guests don't care, that it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect your bottom line. In reality, bookings report that they released 80% of travelers are interested in sustainable lodging now and it makes a difference on where they're booking. I think a perfect example of this Apple just put out this fantastic video on sustainability with Mother Nature and Octavia Spencer. I thought it was phenomenal, because I am not an Apple user. I might become one because of this video and the way that they delivered sustainability in a boardroom in a playful way. Sustainability, for me, can be very dry. If you're just looking at data and you're trying to offset your carbon imprint, it can be very boring. However, there's also this side where it can be fun and playful, and the way that you talk about it, the way that you get people inspired to participate. It doesn't have to be that way. So those are some. There's seven in the article, but for me those are the biggest ones. It doesn't have to be expensive, it can actually save you money. Number two it's easier to implement than you realize. And number three there is a growing demand for this and it is a hot topic and it's coming. The regulations are changing. I think I was at the hospitality show in June and there was a panel on ESG and some of the regulations coming out of Europe. These things are just required to do business, and the major company is if you want to attract their business, travel, you have to certify as a sustainable partner, and that's a huge demand for hoteliers to do. I mean, this is a field that hoteliers usually don't have any background in, so trying to do business in today's world takes a lot of different things that it didn't use to, and this is one of them that's on the horizon for sure.

Josiah: 8:21

That's great. We'll link to that article in the show notes along with that Apple ad. I think people should check out both of those. Tell us a little bit about moving out of the ivory tower into putting things into action. I think your background in operations and again as an owner I feel like it gives you this unique perspective to understand what's practical. How do we begin some early steps on this journey?

Michelle: 8:42

You actually had a podcast that I listened to this morning that was very inspiring with Jacqueline, and she was talking about technology and AI and its role in hospitality, and the comment that I made, which I think you saw, was technology is fantastic, and we are absolutely, as an industry, catching up with other industries in terms of technology. The thing is, though, if you don't have the staff on the ground, technology means nothing, and I remember I was talking with Wendy Zappic from Optii. She's their chief revenue officer, and she told me the software is only as good as the user. So, when you're looking at it from an operational point of view, if your staff is not stable, if you have turnover all the time, the software is not going to do anything, and it's the same thing with your sustainability efforts, but it's operations in general, and how do you address all of that? It comes back to you're running a business with a team, and you need the culture and the purpose and the mission to keep them there, and you have to get them on board, and it starts at the top, and I know this is something that you've talked about in some of your other podcasts, but creating an environment where people thrive, that's actually what I'm really passionate about. I'm working on sustainability, we work on operations, but my goal at the end of the day is I want people to be the best versions of themselves, and sometimes that's a matter of creating a culture. Sometimes it's creating processes, procedures. You create a structure, then people can go and shine. So that's what I really love.