Arnaud Herrmann: The man with the 1,000 gardens
At the head of sustainable development at AccorHotels, Arnaud Herrmann intends to benefit from the presence of one of the world's leading hotel groups in more than 1,700 cities to sow the seeds of an ecological transition and serve a positive concept of hospitality.
INTERVIEW
Sustainability MAG: You are responsible for sustainable development for Europe’s first hotel group, who also ranks in the global top 10. The scope of your reach is considerable and offers the opportunity to lead a transition at a large scale. What are the key impacts you are working toward?
Arnaud Herrmann: Everyday, AccorHotels welcomes hundreds of thousands of customers in its 4,300 hotels globally. That’s 140 million towels washed, 56 million breakfasts served. Our impact on the environment approximates that of a town of 500,000 inhabitants living there day and night.
The environmental footprint of AccorHotels, measured in 2011 and updated in 2016, reveals that food and drinks consumption in hotels and restaurants account for a significant part of the group’s impact on water (40%) and biodiversity (88%). This is mostly linked to upstream agricultural production. Moreover, 77% of our global carbon footprint arises from our hotels’ energy consumption. This guided the decision to prioritize the sustainability of our food supply and building assets in our CSR strategy “Planet 21 – Acting here”.
Beside our environmental impact, our hotels’ activities have an undeniable effect on the local and global economy. Caring to quantify and analyze the spinoffs of its operations, AccorHotels published the results of its socio-economic footprint in 2016; this was a first for an international hotel group. The study revealed that the group supports, directly and indirectly, 880,000 jobs across the world. We also know, thanks to the significant work undertaken by the Utopies advisory office and audited by Ernst and Young, that out of AccorHotels’ 22 billion euros contribution to global GDP, 83% are generated on the territories where our hotels are implanted. This footprint highlights the deep interconnections between the Group, its stakeholders and the communities which harbor our hotels, and underlines the need to continuously reinforce our level of economic, social and societal responsibility in our host countries.
Is your sustainability policy a differentiating factor? To what extent is your approach innovative and inspiring compared to other major hotel groups?
Our ambition with the “Planet 21 - Acting Here” program is to open new avenues for a positive hospitality wherever our hotels are located. We act at the local scale by taking in consideration the needs and specificities unique to each community.
For almost 10 years now, through our agroforestry program Plant for the Planet, we support local producers by planting trees in and around areas of cultivation and grazing. When our clients decide to reuse their towels instead of changing them daily, we make considerable savings; these allow for the viability of the program. In addition, we encourage our hotels to favor these same producers in their foods supply chains. This virtuous way to improve the environmental footprint of the hotel, whilst simultaneously offering local products to our clients, is called “insetting”. The Plant for the Planet program already enabled the planting of around 6 million trees and our objective is to reach 10 million by 2021.
This approach, like others undertaken by AccorHotels, is becoming increasingly strategic for a hotel group, for a very simple reason. Our clients, but also our employees, are increasingly committed to protecting the planet and to building a more inclusive society. Leading ambitious CSR projects means protecting and consolidating our brand.
The Chef of the Mercure de Paris Boulogne in the vertical aeroponic farm installed on the roof of the hotel.
You are the craftsman behind an ambitious campaign to which the AccorHotels group committed two years ago. Concretely, what are the results?
In April 2016, we launched “Planet 21 - Acting Here”, our roadmap for sustainable development; it displays our strong commitments at a 2020 horizon for our employees, clients, partners and local communities. We committed to implement, on a yearly basis, a major innovation to interact with our clients around sustainable developments themes. The last one was the launch of an online platform which allowed our clients, and any interested party, to finance agroforestry projects in the countries in which our hotels are established.
The momentum brought to the Group by the “Planet 21 - Acting Here” was immediately taken up by our hotels; they mobilized with exceptional dynamism. Our teams are encouraged to push things forward and carry local, multi-stakeholder and high value-adding initiatives. Sixty-four percent of hotels have already implemented the 16 mandatory action as outlined in “Planet 21 - Acting Here”. Amongst them are the participation in the Plant for the Planet agroforestry program, the deployment of the WATCH plan for the protection of children, as well as the banning of endangered fish species.
With 150 million meals served annually, the topic of food must weigh quite heavily in your CSR strategy: what are your fields of intervention on this issue?
Eight thousand catering points in our hotels: that number speaks for itself. Our moto is simple: “Feeding our clients in a responsible way, as we would feed our own children”. The Group is committed, through its Food Charter, to offer healthy and good quality food to fight against public health issues and to accompany a transition toward agricultural models promoting a more qualitative, local and less environmentally degrading production. Our second big challenge regarding food is preventing its waste. Every year, a third of the global food production – almost 1.3 billion tons – is spoiled or wasted. We have thus, in a very pragmatic approach, committed to reduce our food waste by 30% by 2020. Finally, we hope to support urban agriculture by installing vegetable gardens in our hotels across the world.
You announced the creation of 1 000 gardens by 2020. What is the goal driving this ambition?
At AccorHotels, we are convinced that the development of urban and peri-urban agriculture could be a potent response to the growing urbanization and the widening gap between rural agriculturally productive regions and cities, which today are mere consumers of these foodstuffs. Beyond our engagement on the gardens program, we encourage and support our hotels in setting up their own beehives and chicken coops. Honey is most often offered at breakfast and in the restaurants’ desserts. Some hotels gift it to their regular clients or to non-profit organizations. The chickens are formidable recyclers: a hen can consume up to 100kg of food waste per year. By developing urban agriculture projects in our hotels, we bring concrete responses to cities’ major challenges regarding the quality of the air urbanites breath and the food they eat. Today, we are present in over 1 700 cities and aim to play a pioneering role in accompanying sustainable transitions at this scale.
Molitor Paris Hotel, McGallery Collection
What methods do you experiment with?
The methods used depend on a range of criteria, such as climate, available space (garden, terrace, balcony, rooftop, façade, etc.), intended use of the products (in the bar, kitchen, as client gifts, etc.). According to these factors, we test multiple techniques, such as the greening of rooftops or terraces, wooden or cemented pots ensuring a good visibility even on smaller surfaces, or even more innovative techniques such as aeroponic cultivation. We are especially proud of the recent installation of a 350m2 aeroponic farm on the Mercure Paris Boulogne hotel’s roof. The first test season was a great success. It allowed not only to supply the hotel’s restaurant but also to distribute fruit and vegetable baskets to the neighborhoods’ inhabitants. The aeroponic gardens have the advantage of being installable on ordinary flat rooftops, even with low bearing capacities.
Where are you at today? How many gardens have bloomed?
From the launch of the 1,000 gardens by 2020 objective, our hotels have affirmed their enthusiasm and willingness to join us in this ambitious target. Two years later, 750 hotels have their own vegetable garden. At this rate, the objective will be reached – and surpassed – rapidly! And you can be sure that it's not about to stop.
What are the tangible results of this experience? To this date, do they fulfill your expectations?
Of course, our hotels don’t hope to reach self-sufficiency in their food production. Their trade is hospitality, and their mission is to welcome people and make them live an exceptional and authentic experience. If the hotel restaurant can offer on its menu a vegetable salad composed entirely, or even partially, from products cultivated on the rooftop, if the mint used for the mojito comes from the herb pots on the terrace, if the breakfast’s honey comes from nearby beehives, the client will be more than happy.
Another significant advantage of the gardens is reflected in team cohesion. Even if most hotels contract specialized companies to set up their agricultural installations, the care and harvest are undertaken by hotel employees. This enables the inclusion and engagement of our teams in the wider reflection on the sustainability of our supply chains. We even have a case where the teams from the Novotel in Rueil-Malmaison took it a step further by installing pedagogic animations in its gardens to involve the pupils of a nearby school.
Finally, the installation of gardens can sometimes give rise to surprising discoveries. Last November, during the works for a vegetable garden on the terrace of a Parisian hotel, an edible truffle was found at the foot of a hornbeam: a first in Paris!
These gardens also combine two rising trends in the hotel sector: furthering client experience and the promotion of the local and eco-conscious…
I couldn’t agree more. Today, a client doesn’t come to a hotel only to rent a room for the night and take his buffet breakfast the next day. He or she comes to live a moment, an experience and awaits personalized attention; expectations need to be anticipated, surprises need to be created. And since consumers are increasingly conscious about the quality of their products at home, the also pay greater attention when they come to our hotels and restaurants. They won’t be disappointed, because they will find fresh produce, from local agricultural systems and grown with organic nutrients.
More globally, would you say that we are at the dawn of a sustainable trend in the hospitality industry? Eco-lodges are gaining market presence, products are organic or homemade… Is this a clear turning point in the industry?
Only two years ago, we led a study amongst our clients to understand their behaviors and attitudes towards sustainable development in their everyday life and their travel habits; we inquired about their awareness and concern for the different sustainability programs envisioned in our hotels. We gathered many important conclusions, particularly regarding food. Only 6% of our clients are not sensitive to a healthy diet, and one in three is convinced by produce from fair trade suppliers or sourced in the hotel’s garden. So yes, the hospitality sector is in the midst of a real transformation which will take us toward a model which champions more responsible and respectful social and environmental interactions. And our teams are there to lead this transformation alongside our clients and partners.
Arnaud Herrmann
In 2013 he joined AccorHotels as the group's Sustainable Development Director. In that role, he has designed and now coordinates the implementation of the Group’s CSR program, called “PLANET 21 – Acting Here”, which was rolled out to 4,200 hotels, reaching 250,000 employees spanning close to 100 countries. Besides this, he is also a member of the Ethics and CSR Committee, whose role is to establish and pursue the achievement of the Group's sustainable development and compliance commitments. He holds a master's degree from the HEC Paris business school.