Rahm has been working in the area of auditing and certification in tourism for several years when he was asked, due to his extensive knowledge of this subject, to translate the Travelife for Accommodation certification checklist into Arabic. This led to a greater understanding of how sustainability certification works for hotels and as soon as an opportunity arose, Rahm completed Travelife’s auditor training programme and since then has audited extensively for Travelife in North Africa.  

Over the years Rahm has seen growing concern about the environmental impacts of tourism, with a demand for hotels to ‘go green’ coming from within the industry in North Africa. He believes that an essential part of that is hotels accurately tracking their environmental impacts, through consistently taking measurements and ensuring performance is reviewed annually.

He also finds that the most proactive and successful hotels are really engaging with guests and staff on environmental issues, ensuring that they are educating them about why sustainability is so important, and how each person can affect positive change. Hotels cannot hope to have meaningful impacts if they are not supported by staff and guests in their efforts to operate responsibly. He stresses that effective communications are therefore an essential part of sustainability management, and suggests that businesses make use of all channels available to them, such as social media and email campaigns, in order to deliver key messages.

Rahm also reminds us that changes to procurement practices can be incredibly effective, offering quick wins with minimal investment. For example, buying new items such as linens and paper products that are made from recycled materials, and investing in technology to help with the effective separation and disposal of waste.