The South Aegean Region commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to prepare a plan to create guidelines for implementing the certification for the hotel industry related to “The Rhodes Co-Lab Project” for the Dodecanese Regional Unit. The effort, which is a project for the benefit of TUI, is just the latest effort to greenwash the public and the industry with a nebulous but popular cultural ideology.
According to the press from the South Aegean Region, this latest guide will be an essential tool and part of the chain needed to promote the hotel units as effectively as possible and expand Rhodes’s tourism product. At TWM, TUI CEO had this to say about the program:
We have high ambitions, and we could not wish for better partners than our Greek and South Aegean friends… Our joint vision for the Co-Lab is clear. We know what needs to be done. We will now bring the Destination Co-Lab to life.
A Plan of Holistic BS
The acquisition of the certification mark and the official characterization of these businesses as sustainable will offer them a unique comparative advantage over their competitors. The plan is to increase visitors and, subsequently, revenue for the destination overall.
One has to wonder about commissioning PwC to create a standard mark under the auspices of the world’s largest tourism stakeholders. Will this new stamp of approval give TUI more leverage over hoteliers than the company already has? Once again, TUI is developing strategies and public relations campaigns to drive all competition out of business.
TUI’s professed vision is to create “a holistic approach to sustainability for the first time in the world!” As the past co-owner of the most influential PR News outlet in Europe, the terms holistic and sustainable have been buzzwords on every press release from hospitality and tourism companies wordwide for some time. I know, because I wrote thousands of press releases for hotels, marketing firms, travel technology companies, and etc. TUI and other tourism companies have been engaged in this same activity for nearly two decades, so the “first in the world” jargon is a PR poof. I wonder if “holistic” is inclusive of meeting client expectations. For those who like a good laugh, or cry depending, visit the Facebook page of TUI Customer Service and Holiday Complaints. The following complaint glared at me in a few seconds:
Once they have your money, that’s it. I had to cancel due to a diagnosis. They wouldn’t change to next year. They kept my money which I am in process of claiming back and they will resell my honeymoon. How do they get away with it? Disgraceful
The Short Stick
In my opinion, this is yet another game of smoke and mirrors the bean counters (probably actuaries) at TUI have calculated will expand the company’s control over hotels. The graphic (above left) is not unlike the hundreds we created to make campaigns more appealing. The term for this kind of thing was called “Greenwashing” in a 2006 report about the Tourism Concern accusing Hilton shortchanging communities and destroying habitats despite the company’s claims to be clean and green.
Also in 2006, a study entitled “A Long-haul Destination:: Sustainability Reporting Among Tour Operators” revealed that concluded that “in comparison to other industry sectors, tour operators perform weak at best.” The report did, however, list TUI at the top as far as reporting on these issues was concerned. But we all know how creative numbers and words can be in reports. For me this simply means the German firm has better wordsmiths and accountants on retainer.
In 2011, TUI was campaigning heavily on the “sustainability” front, but reports condemning the company for what some termed as “hollow PR stunts.” An in depth study by Professor Freye Higgins-Despioles in 2010 nails the PR and marketing processes I am talking about. This passage she sites from Professor Brian Wheeller is damning where the whole “sustainability” front is concerned.
Sustainable tourism does provide the answer. Unfortunately it is the wrong question. Rather than effectively addressing the complexities of tourism impact, what it is actually achieving is the consider
ably easier task of answering the question — ‘How best can we cope with the criticism of tourism impact?’ – as opposed to the impact itself.
Dr. Wheeller also argued back in the 1990s that the “current system of neoliberalism and its attendant Culture-ideology of consumerism is inherently unsustainable.” Given the state of the world we live in today, it seems prophetic that a tourism report from 14 years ago would spell it all out. The professor basically says that sustainability in the sector is a “conjured up” and intellectually appealing concept. And this is, in my opinion, exactly what TUI is still leveraging for growth.
Sustaining Profit
An interesting thing happened to me yesterday as I drove from a few miles inland back toward Crete’s capital of Heraklion. At a point, road travellers are afforded a magnificent panorama of Heraklion, the harbour, there, and Dia Island in the distance. Just before sunset, I looked on in utter amazement as a gigantic cruise ship docked at the port loomed over everything in the city. There were, in fact, two cruise ships docked, but the one appeared like a floating hotel twice the size of RMS Titanic, a behemoth carrying thousands of budget tourists to a town already broken from COVID, the financial crisis, and the business ideals of companies like TUI.
Applying the term sustainable tourism, let alone regenerative tourism to such companies is tantamount to blasphemy. It’s a joke. It’s a cruel joke. Or “conjured” from the bottom of the boardroom seats in Hanover and other corporate headquarters. If you Google TUI sustainability with custom date ranges, the bread crumbs of the company’s PR go from occasional mentions in the late 1990s, to a limitless list of press releases or paid content on Google’s search pages. From a branding perspective, TUI is not synonymous with all that is good for our planet. But it’s not hard to prove the company is just the opposite. Read this report where the German courts ruled TUI Cruises is full of it on sustainability claims, and this FT piece about investors ready to pull out over cruise pollution.
To be continued…..
