The Best Sustainability Solutions Are There. Why Can't Hotels Use Them?

Every hotel operator's inbox is full of emails from suppliers offering solutions and a Zoom call. Sustainable packaging, refill systems, energy monitoring, waste solutions - real companies, real products, competitive pricing. Usually locally located - so fast, cheap logistics too are an added bonus, plus come on - you'd be supporting a local business. It doesn't get better, does it? Except...

Here's what happens next, if you work for a managed property rather than a franchise of some big international chain: NOTHING. Not because the product isn't good. Because you don't get to decide.

Everything - and I mean everything - runs through an approved supplier list, set at regional or global procurement level, usually a very long way above the property you actually run. Want to print a brochure? Walk outside, print it yourself for $10. Except you can't. You have to use the approved vendor, whose quote starts at $19. Same story for every single thing the hotel buys. It gets worse, if it's another must-have sustainability solution.

Try to push for an exception and you'll spend a year of your life on it, and earn yourself a quiet reputation as a "difficult operator" - which is not the kind of reputation that helps a career.

And this, my friends, this is the actual reason hotel operations are so expensive. Not inflation. Not the cost of doing business. A near-monopoly situation, where a single approved supplier can charge $10 for a kilo of potatoes that doesn't cost even $1 in a market - and nobody with the authority to change that has any real incentive to do so.

Which raises the obvious question. Is it that nobody at the top cares enough to renegotiate, or to widen the approved list and let a bit of competition back in? Or is there a reason - a person, a relationship, a strategy - why the list stays exactly as short as it is?

I genuinely don't know. I just know the sustainable, cheaper option may have landed in your inbox again this morning. And you probably still can't buy it.

xoxo, Bored Hotelier 😉

P.S. I know - I know. I'll get a lot of angry procurement people into my DMs now, talking to me about legal, insurance, vetted safe suppliers, etc. etc. I am not suggesting to bypass all those processes. I'm suggesting to expand the network, and let a bit of real competition do what it does best - delivering the best deal to hotel operators, instead of letting suppliers get arrogant knowing they're the only option. (Not even the best one, most of the time.)