Mercedes Hunt, Founder, Map & Compass Consulting
Map & Compass Consulting provides advisory services to hospitality, travel and tourism businesses, special events, and event venues. They help organizations to develop and implement their sustainable hospitality programs including strategy, marketing, certifications, training, research, grant writing, and more.
What do you actually do all day?
Generally, my work is divided into three focus areas: destinations, events/venues, and certifications.
Destinations: We help destinations with tourism development strategies around how to better manage existing tourism or how to increase tourism. For example, we did research for one city where we conducted interviews with local residents and businesses about their concerns and ideas for developing tourism in the area. We learned that the locals didn’t want to grow regular tourism because they didn’t want the increased traffic but they liked the idea of holding a big annual festival in order to bring in additional revenue for the city. We also look at a destination’s goals and help them to match those goals with the way they’re marketing themselves to the world. Because greenwashing can be so prevalent, it can backfire if it’s not done effectively.
Events/Venues: Many of our event clients contact us because they’re interested in making their event zero waste. We help them understand the principles of zero waste and arrange the logistics necessary to make that possible. We also help with developing plans for crisis management and emergency response planning. Because of climate change and the increase in terrorist attacks around the world, event managers need to have a plan for guaranteeing the safety of their staff and attendees. For example, I was managing a conference in Kenya and there was a terrorist attack in the mall nearby two days prior to the event. Two of our attendees were held hostage, one of which was a speaker. These situations generally have better outcomes if you have a plan in place and your employees are trained well enough to assist effectively with keeping everyone safe and secure.
Certifications: There is an overwhelming number of options for sustainability certifications in the tourism industry and many of our clients come to us looking for help with navigating that landscape. The Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) started in 2008 with the UN Foundation and became an organization in 2010 with founding support by UNWTO, UNEP, UNF, and NGOs. It has extremely rigorous standards for destination certification which includes requirements around climate change strategies, assessments, and measurements. It’s a very thorough process which makes it a very high standard for sustainable tourism which is wonderful, but it can be difficult to achieve for those destinations without the funding for the required assessments. Green Globe is a sustainable tourism and event certification that’s very popular in Europe. There are also green event certifications such the Events Industry Council’s Principles for Sustainable Events (formerly APEX) standard which provides guidance around accommodations, A/V, destinations, exhibits, food and beverage, transport, venues, and more. ISO 20121 is also a green event certification but it’s not pursued as frequently. The International Association of Convention Centers’ Green Star Certification has a certification for convention centers. Still others are concentrated on very specific areas such as Eat REAL for food service, TRUE Zero Waste for waste, and Green Seal for cleaning products. There are also the more well-known building-focused certifications such as LEED, the Living Building Challenge, WELL, and ISO 14001.
What are some of the biggest sustainability related challenges in the travel and tourism industry?
Perhaps the biggest overarching challenge is that we need to find ways to help tourists reduce their impact when traveling. When people travel, they consume more – more transportation, water, food, showers, toilet flushes, waste, etc. That affects destination communities by impacting their air quality, water quality, traffic congestion, and waste among other things. Many people don’t realize the impact a single tourist can have on an area.
It can be difficult for people to find organizations that can help them reduce their impact when they travel. There are over 130 different definitions of ecotourism out there and research shows that the majority of consumers are confused by all the different terms which has allowed greenwashing to become rampant. As an industry we’re working hard towards clarifying these terms, it’s one of the issues I spend a lot of time working on.
Employee engagement and buy-in is another ongoing challenge for everyone in this industry. I’ve done a lot of research in this area and found that for many of these events and venues you’ve got mostly temporary, part-time contract workers, some of whom only work 5-10 days a year. It’s very hard to get workers like this the training they need in order to support a sustainability program effectively. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to increase waste diversion rates the way we’d like to. If your staff isn’t trained properly, then they won’t be able to guide your guests successfully.
Another big concern for the industry is the increase of hurricanes and other major weather events. Think of somewhere like Puerto Rico; tourists stop coming to a destination after a hurricane. In the short term, events and vacations are cancelled so there’s lost revenue there, but the real damage comes when people are fearful the destination can’t host tourists after the initial recovery. That leads to a lot of layoffs and lost revenue at a time when people really need the money to rebuild. The best thing you can do to help a destination after a major storm is to vacation there as planned!
There are also problems with cities not planning well for sheltering people during storms. Convention centers are usually where a lot of people go during hurricanes, but most cities don’t provide these venues with reimbursement for the many thousands of dollars often needed to repair the facility after the public has left. People come with their kids and animals and there’s often mud, food, biological waste, and physical damage everywhere.
Some destinations are also receiving a lot of negative press around the impact of climate change or plastic waste on their communities. Think of Bali and the video that shows the plastic bags floating around a once beautiful reef. The main economy of Bali is tourism, and that video is doing a lot of damage there.
What are some of the current trends in sustainable tourism?
Two of the biggest trends people are focusing on addressing in the tourism industry right now are single use plastics and overtourism. I think most people are familiar with the problems and initiatives surrounding single use plastics, but they might not realize how big of an issue overtourism is. Think of somewhere like Venice, it’s a bucket list item for many people around the world and so many tourists have bombarded it that it’s really lost its sense of self. All of the small, unique shops are gone and there are often so many people on the streets and in the museums that it just feels crowded and touristy instead of charming. They’ve started to try a new strategy of charging a very high daily tax on lodging which has reduced the length of stay for many tourists. It’s a tricky approach because on the one side we need to protect places like Venice from overtourism, but we also want to keep experiences accessible to everyone. Keeping travel accessible to all is really important for developing the public’s support for conservation and preservation.
I spend a lot of time helping emerging destinations to strategically plan to prevent future overtourism. The western side of Brazil has done this very well in the near the Paraguay boarder. The state of Mato Grosso do Sul has a lot of designated conservation areas and the government has set up a lot of rules about tourism there. For example, if you want to host tourism activity on your land, you need to do studies about carrying capacity, environmental impact, cultural impact, and then host a series of tests, scientists, and specialists who determine a maximum number of tourists you’re allowed to host per day. As an example, there’s a beautiful cave called Abismo Ahumas that you can rappel down the equivalent of twenty-six building stories and then go snorkeling. The administration has determined that a maximum of 20 tourists can safely visit each day without devastating the local ecology. When rules like this are implemented, some members of the community worry that if you give tourists too many rules about how to conduct themselves then they won’t come. In reality, the tourists that aren’t willing to follow those rules will just go somewhere else but there are still plenty of responsible tourists who understand the importance of low-impact travel. It also makes sure the money stays with the local businesses instead of out of town tour operators and helps to protect the environment. Caps like this do somewhat limit the earnings potential of the local businesses, but usually if they are deliberate about what they charge then it isn’t a problem.
What was your path to this role?
I started out working on major Hollywood events such as the Emmys, Oscars, and Grammys. I couldn’t believe the waste that was left behind at these events, it was crazy! Eventually I left the events industry to lead a youth sailing program, where a friend helped me realize that what I really wanted to do was get a Masters in Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism, which I earned at San Francisco State University. I loved it so much I decided to pursue a PhD in Sustainable Events and Tourism at the University of Utah where I focused my research on employee perceptions of sustainability programs in US convention centers. During my doctorate, I became the events director and eventually the managing director of The International Ecotourism Society which hosts massive events all over the world. A few years ago, I saw an opportunity to make a more direct impact through my own consulting business, so I started Map & Compass.
I wrote a really helpful article that outlines how people can get started in the travel and tourism industry titled Getting Into the Industry.
What are your favorite resources?
ITB Berlin is one of the largest tourism trade shows in the world. It’s held annually in Berlin every March and it’s got a big focus on sustainability.
IMEX America and IMEX Frankfurt are other B2B trade shows which attract a lot of meeting planners and representatives from destinations. They both provide a lot of sustainability education and are open to the public.
WTM Latin America and WTM London are two huge international travel trade shows.
The Global Sustainable Tourism Council is a wonderful organization to be a part of. They have a fantastic annual conference as well as training sessions all over the world.
There’s a great website with a free online course on how to plan a Zero Waste event called Future of Waste that was developed by a friend of mine.
I closely follow the Sustainability Leaders Project. They interview leaders of sustainability tourism and share practical advice for the advancement of the tourism industry.
Every January the New York Times hosts a Travel Show. This one is more of a show for consumers, but they host an event the day before the show opens that’s only for professionals. The Events Industry Council, Adventure Travel Trade Association, Travel Massive, and Venue Connect are other great annual industry events. Most of these also do local events throughout the year or have sub-groups focused on sustainability.
A lot of travel and tourism professionals attend Sustainable Brands because marketing is such an important component of what we do. I found their annual sustainable metrics conference to be groundbreaking.
MeetGreen’s members were the pioneers of sustainable events in the United States.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has developed an awesome Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) with training on sustainable tourism development.
There are a few niche organizations as well such as the Global Sustainable Aviation Forum, the Green Hotelier, Sustainable Rural Development International, Ethnotourism.org and the Green Sports Alliance.
Other groups that are less focused on travel and tourism but more sustainability and its principles are the International Living Future Institute (I HIGHLY recommend their Unconference), African Wildlife Foundation, Bioneers, Be Social Change, the Rainforest Alliance, and the World Wildlife Fund.
If individual travelers are looking for resources to help them find certified ecotourism businesses, they can try the Global Ecotourism Network, the EcoClub, Sustainable Tourism International (STI), theImpact Travel Alliance and the Travel Foundation and the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.
Hopineo is a grassroots organization that was founded with the understanding that the majority of small tourism organizations can’t afford a full-time help that they need to be sustainable and don’t know how to market themselves properly. They offer consulting resources and support to help these destinations approach tourism in a sustainable way. Students and young professionals can take a year off and travel all over the world, consulting these businesses and destinations in exchange for room and board and funding for travel to their next destination. It’s great because it’s both a wonderful, fun experience, and it helps individuals to build their resumes. I love it because you’re basically giving these organizations the tools they need to be successful on their own and to bring their own unique voice and approach to tourism when they market themselves to the world.
