Integrating technology with hospitality and its positive impact on sustainability
by Elaine Legault, Vice-President, Events and Client Experience, Palais de Congrès de Montréal and Sven Bossu, CEO AIPC
The commitment throughout the entire event value chain to become carbon zero is rapidly growing. Initiatives such as Net Zero Carbon Event (NZCE) not only create awareness but also provide tools and best practices, allowing the different stakeholders to embark on the journey towards a more sustainable future. In addition, it is important that participants to events are equally committed. That is why we want to make sustainability cool for delegates.
There is no doubt that sustainability is high on the agenda. Of the top 10 risks in the 2024 Global Risk Report of the World Economic Forum, seven are either societal or environmental. At the same time, global leaders are facing multiple challenges, impacting the focus required to deal with the biggest challenge humanity has faced so far.
The event industry is subject to exactly the same. While there is no doubt about the ambition to become carbon zero, we also need to deal with rising costs, changing customer behavior, finding (and retaining) talent, and a market landscape which seems to be in a continuous flux. This being said: the event industry is doing very well and as the saying goes, “You need to fix the roof while the sun is shining.”
Over the last 12 months, many convention centers have launched their plan to become carbon zero. From the Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Center to the Scottish Event Campus: all have moved from PowerPoint to practice, with some of them setting forward very ambitious timelines.
At the same time, we tend to forget a very important stakeholder: the delegate. She or he is choosing the mode of transport, the hotel and seemingly trivial—though important—details such as opting for public transport on site, all of which have an important impact on the footprint the delegate is leaving behind. The challenge is that the delegate often is not fully aware of the difference they can make and the impact their decisions can have. To be brutally honest: dry fact and figures might not be sufficient to nudge behavior.
That is why we believe we need to support the delegate in making conscious decisions on these important matters. As a lot of these choices are destination driven (Luxembourg is a very different animal than Beijing when it comes to moving around), we believe that venues and destinations should be at the helm of driving the change, while at the same time offering a platform which is recognizable and consistent for the global citizens attending events worldwide.
This is where technology kicks in. The not-for-profit organization Cool The Globe has created a platform which motivates individuals to change their behavior and engage in easy-to-accomplish climate actions. It does so by setting up individual or group challenges, tracking the impact of the behavior of individuals, and by offering dashboards to organizers to monitor and adapt when necessary.
It is our ambition to have an event focused, venue based version of this application ready in 2024. The goal is to enable venues and destinations worldwide to offer this application as a service to their customer and impact delegate behavior in a SMART way. The tangible outcomes can then be fed into reports toward industry initiative such as NZCE, demonstrating the progress made on different levels, including delegate behavior.
Most importantly: We believe that this application can make sustainable behavior cool. There are elements of gamification, group and individual challenges, and lots of fun, which are crucial to make this type of solution accepted by the global tribe of next-gen participants in events — whether it is the annual congress of a medical association or the jamboree of a youth movement.
That is why we have put in place a working group and secured the funding necessary to make this happen — because we can.
This story originally appeared in the Q2 2024 issue of Exhibit City News, p. 28. For original layout, visit https://issuu.com/exhibitcitynews/docs/ecn_q1_2024.
