Sustainability continues to be an important consideration for the travel and hospitality industry, as illustrated by the 83% of travelers who highlight the importance of sustainable travel to them.
For travel and hospitality organizations, prioritizing ESG goals has never been more important, and procurement can play a key role in this journey.
While this comes with its own challenges, leveraging the right tools and technology can empower travel and hospitality organizations to make more responsible procurement decisions that align with their sustainability commitments.
Top challenges for hospitality procurement on their ESG journey
1. Balancing costs
There’s often a perception that more sustainable products can be more expensive than conventional options. With cost management top of mind, hospitality procurement teams are likely to deprioritize their ESG goals in the face of immediate, shorter-term needs.
Procurement teams need to highlight the business case for procuring more responsibly, such as long-term cost savings and purchasing risk reduction.
2. Sourcing for more sustainable products and supplies
More sustainable products may not be as readily available or easily accessible for procurement teams and buyers, especially when they are based in distributed locations and different regions.
There are also concerns about the quality and consistency of more sustainable products. With the high expectations of guests and customers, travel and hospitality brands cannot risk any changes in product quality that would affect the customer experience.
3. Managing multiple suppliers
While hospitality organizations might want to support their local communities, working with a multitude of small, local, or diverse sellers can be overwhelming for their procurement teams. Identifying, vetting, and negotiating with numerous suppliers can be time-consuming and inefficient.
Procuring from multiple sellers can also complicate the tracking and reporting of spend across diverse vendors, making it more challenging to measure progress towards ESG goals.
How smart business buying tools can support travel and hospitality organizations
1. Easily search for products
Travel and hospitality organizations need to streamline the process of discovering and purchasing products with sustainability certifications for their buyers.
With Amazon Business, procurement administrators can implement buying policies that direct buyers to a wide selection of products with sustainability certifications. This saves valuable time for both buyers and administrators, making the purchase of more sustainable products easy and efficient.
These buying policies can also highlight products sold by small and diverse sellers. This makes it easier for buyers, regardless of their location, to support their communities by purchasing from local suppliers.
2. Buy in bulk
In the short term, procurement teams can first consider consolidating orders to purchase more sustainable products in bulk. With quantity discounts on millions of items on Amazon Business, travel and hospitality organizations can save instantly on supplies across various categories, such as breakroom, maintenance, cleaning and janitorial.
3. Track progress
Tracking spend can help procurement teams better justify the long-term value of more responsible purchasing. With Amazon Business Analytics, administrators can download the credentials report and view sustainability, seller, and compliance credentials at the item level detail for all orders – all without the burden of manual data collection.
This empowers organizations to track their spend on more sustainable products or with diverse sellers, further simplifying their reporting on ESG goals.
Driving ESG goals with strategic procurement
Embarking on the ESG journey is challenging, yet essential for the travel and hospitality industry. By strategically aligning procurement processes with their ESG goals and leveraging innovative tools, hospitality organizations can be one step closer to fulfilling their customer expectations for sustainable business practices.
