Meet the couple rallying the hotel industry to do better on climate change

Speaking to TTG just days before world leaders gathered in Sharm el Sheikh for the Cop27 Summit, she was emphatic about the need to take action now, as it’s become a climate emergency: “We know the timeline – to limit global warming to around 1.5C the April 2022 UN Climate Report by IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate  Change) insisted that global greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43 per cent by 2030 and methane by about a third. It is almost inevitable that we will reach and exceed the 1.5C threshold.” 

The NOW Climate Positive Program and Award, launched this month, is offering hotels and resorts access to a fully funded integrated sustainability programme. This includes extensive training by EarthCheck for up to 30 people per property per year, to increase the number of staff engaged in understanding negative impacts, and who are able to benchmark, measure and reduce carbon emissions, for independent audit.

“Typically, hotels train one person in sustainability and they have that responsibility, but we need everyone onboard,” explained Alexa.

Climate positive happens when you offset further than bringing your footprint to zero to remove additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

There’s a joining fee per property of 1,000 Swiss francs (£881) plus an annual membership of 2,000 francs (£1,762). However, until the end of 2023, hoteliers can take advantage of a special offer – there’s no joining fee and membership is discounted at 50%. 

“The value of this fully funded programme is 15,000 Swiss francs (£13,211) plus the access provided to certified carbon offsetting projects price cap for up to 10 years,” she said. 

She explained that capping the cost of offsetting was an important part of the offer. “We don’t know what carbon offsetting will cost next year but we know it’s going up,” she said. “Analysts predict a 10-fold projection in the price of carbon offsetting by end of the decade and 50-fold by the end of 2050. For hotels to plan, it’s important to know what their expenditure is going to be.”

She also made the point that while carbon offsetting in travel was largely voluntary for now, the amounts were “absurdly small”, and there would come a point when it became mandatory for businesses to do it. 

“Come in now,” she urged. “Don’t wait until two years down the road, when it could be mandated and the costs have increased.

“It is crucial that companies have a science-based sustainability programme with independent audit for accountability and communication with transparency to build trust and engage all stakeholders,” she stressed, emphasising the partnership with EarthCheck to provide measurement tools and reporting templates for hotels to use. “Many sustainability programmes are not science-based and there’s not enough evidence to say they’ll do what they say they will. Measurement is important to understand their impacts.”

Alexa and Onno were inspired to act after they were employed as consultants for luxury Swiss property The Alpina Gstaad: “The shrinking glaciers in the Alps are very visible,” explained Alexa. “If you return to the same destination often enough, you see these changes in nature.”

She was also inspired by conversations with her millennial-age son: “He told me, Mum, your generation is part of the problem and you need to help us fix this.” 

They launched It Must Be Now in 2017 but it was during the pandemic that they devised this programme, funded by the owners of carbon offsetting projects worldwide, when many members put sustainability on hold in the fight for survival. 

“We are strong advocates for the positive impacts of travel but we’re also aware of the negative impacts. This is about how the industry stays relevant. Travel is powerful, we need it to help each other, to become a better world,” said Onno.