When Being Green is Just Not Enough

I can still picture him today, the man appointed to assess Mazzard Farm for the UK’s main Green Tourism grading scheme, now almost 5 years ago: twenty-something, a tad introvert, probably an environmental science degree, and clipboard in hand. Of course he had a clipboard in hand. On it a set of forms, each with endless rows of questions and obligatory check boxes. Questions about the number of light bulbs, shower head flow rates, our recycling habits, whether we grew our own veg, and many more. Main purpose in the man’s life was to try and tick as many boxes as he possibly could. Had he ticked a sufficient number, he would tell us we had achieved ‘Gold status’, and everyone was happy.

We’ve had him back here once more, but having realised he was still ticking the same old boxes behind the same old questions, we decided not to bother again. Some risk I should add, because without an ‘official green grading’, we could run the risk of losing out on awards, specific green (promotional) listings, and dare I say it, bookings. But thankfully that concern could be laid to rest when bookings kept coming in just as before, and we were crowned most sustainable Devon tourism business in 2010 and again in 2012, leaving behind us quite a number of businesses who could (still) show their official gold status in green tourism.

So what do we think is wrong with a set of questions and tick boxes when it comes to striving to be ‘as green as possible’ you may ask? Not a lot, especially if ‘being green’ is your key objective. But it is 2013 now, and what we aspire to is not just being as environmentally sound as we can be; we want to be as sustainable as possible. And being a sustainable tourism business takes a lot more than a recycling policy, LED lighting, a compost heap, and a few Renewables on site.

For us, key to being sustainable is that we are firmly rooted in our local community. And that we work hard to try and make our guests appreciate, support, and engage with this same community too. We do this by informing them we ‘buy local’, why we do so, and why we think they may have a much richer holiday experience if they do so too. We spend a lot of time promoting local things to do, and enthusiastically telling our guests about all the beauty they can find (almost literally) on their temporary doorstep. Doing this hits two birds with one stone: they help support our local community, and they significantly cut down on car miles whilst here at Mazzard Farm. Oh and by the way, they tend to have a much more enjoyable holiday too.

In addition, we try and involve our community in what we do. We invite local groups to enjoy our orchard and woodlands, we build fires with Brownies, juice apples with school children, and we get actively involved with schools and in local initiatives.

But there is more: we believe that a sustainable business is a completely transparent business, and for us that includes total transparency, and dare I use the word, fairness, when it comes to our pricing policy. For us this means no late booking discounts, no negotiating for a better price, but awarding loyalty, direct referrals, and early booking. We know this sometimes ‘costs’ us a booking, but we accept this, knowing that in the end everyone can be assured that the price they have paid for a stay at Mazzard Farm has been a fair price, and that the people staying in an identical cottage next door have paid this price too.

And I could continue for a bit, but to keep this article a ‘sustainable’ length, I probably better leave it at this. What I will do though is invite anyone who wants to know more, see what we have done, tell us about their experiences, or for whatever reason wants to chat with us, to contact us, and we’d be delighted to engage. Because sharing is also sustainability, as is learning. A very big part of it in fact!

Ruud Jansen Venneboer & Jacqueline Parker

Mazzard Farm holiday cottages, Devon, UK

http://www.mazzardfarm.com/home/mazzard-farm-and-the-environment/

info@mazzardfarm.com

01404 – 815492

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MazzardFarm

Facebook: www.facebook.com/MazzardFarm

Green Tourism – fact or fiction?

It is undeniable that more and more tourism businesses have started thinking ‘green’. And quite successfully too, even if some may not be getting much beyond a few slaps of ‘greenwash’. This can only be a good thing, as the tourism industry can make a huge difference to the world we live in when it comes to helping save the planet. Whether through significant reductions in energy consumption, reducing / reusing / recycling, emphasis on sustainable forms of travel, or indeed a focus on local suppliers and the local community – or ideally all of these – tourism businesses small or large can each do their thing. No, should do their thing.

When we set up Mazzard Farm some 4 years back, there was no question as to whether we’d go the green route. The question was how far we could realistically push it, given our relatively small size and associated budgets. What we found was that we could actually achieve a lot, with most steps taken not costing us a penny. Having won a small cabinet full of green tourism related awards in the meantime, a comment many people make goes along the lines of “your green ethos must have really helped you fill up so quickly”. My initial response to this was “Well, it is early days, but I am sure it helps”. A year ago that would have changed into “Not sure, but it won’t have done us any harm”. Now, just over 3 years since opening, I am not even sure whether the latter luke-warm response is actually true.

And this explains the headline: is green tourism fact or fiction? Is there actually a true market for green travel? Or is it all talk and no action? Judging by the number of articles written about, and presumably for, the green tourist, and the number of web portals and magazines dedicated to them, you would think that this market must be fairly sizeable. Indeed, that there are plenty of people out there for whom the ‘greenness’ of their holiday destination in one of the main factors, or the main factor even, when picking their holiday. Sadly, I am getting more and more signals that this group is actually rather small, and that as a product, green tourism is a minute niche product at best.  And I am concluding that even for a multiple green award winning holiday business like ours, dedicated green visitors are not going to keep our bread buttered. In fact, it probably wouldn’t even allow us to buy the bread!

Allow me to provide some evidence: we spend some 30% of our marketing budget on listings with green portals and adds in green magazines. Yet, less than 2% our web traffic originates from these! Worse, since opening, just one (from well over 600) booking can be attributed directly to people having used one of these green portals or read some green magazine! To put this in some perspective, almost 6% of Mazzard Farm bookings are from families with twins, who are a demographic group as small as 1.5% of the UK population – yet, we don’t target this group at all, leave alone spend any of our marketing budget on them. Yet, contrary to Green Travellers, when did you last hear anyone referring to ‘families with twins’ as a significant special interest group?

To further substantiate my concerns whether these committed green travellers can actually fill a room when together, I decided to do a little experiment earlier this month. We put together a highly attractive ‘green offer’, and ran an active twitter and facebook campaign pushing the offer. From looking at the retweets, the offer has by now been under the eyes of some 15,000+ people on twitter alone. We have yet to receive the first enquiry. This experiment mirrors our attempts last year to push various green breaks, launched during the reasonably high profile Green Tourism Week. Again, we saw not one single uptake. Or enquiry even for that matter.

Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t go green as some sort of marketing ploy, and we would have made exactly the same decisions regarding green investments today as we did 4 years back, but just because we believe in being a ‘good’ business. Nor would I suggest that for some of our guests it hasn’t been a factor in deciding to join us. What we are seriously questioning though is whether the time and money spent on focussing on a potential group of dedicated environmentally conscious guests is the best way forward. I’m afraid that at present I can only conclude that it isn’t. Then again, we may have just been looking in the wrong places…

Ruud Jansen Venneboer

Owner Mazzard Farm holiday cottages, East Devon, UK

Winner of 2010 Devon Tourism Excellence Awards for Sustainable Tourism and Winner of Winners

www.mazzardfarm.com