She began to look for a role that would connect with her own values and enthusiasm for protecting the environment, eventually leading her to Travelife. She says it means a lot to her to know how well our certification programme is helping to look after the environment. For her sustainability auditing is a dream come true, giving her opportunities to keep learning so that she can be an even better advocate for sustainability, hopefully inspiring more people to tackle climate change.

She especially enjoys connecting people during audits. She finds that we can all learn from each other, no matter our background or nationality. Paola says it gives her hope to see hotel staff so dedicated to improving their impacts and continually trying to achieve better results. She also gets to see some innovative ideas that hotels implement to improve their impacts. She recalls a technique using ions that Zealova Resort & Spa in Thailand has employed to clean their swimming pools without using chemicals.  Another Thai property, The Sands Khao Lak, help to reduce their use of chemicals, water and energy by offering a free beverage voucher for guests that opt to have their room serviced less often.

Advice for businesses

We asked Paola what advice she would give to businesses that want to improve their environmental and social impacts. “I would identify the exact sustainability related challenges you are facing, then find a way to quantify and translate those into operational, financial or other metric-driven terms that can be easily understood.” She believes that sustainable business practices need to be incorporated into all operational areas using a step-by-step process that breaks down challenges into manageable packets of work, better enabling the business to monitor and measure their success, adjusting initiatives as needed. As each step is completed, new goals and strategies are set so that improvement is continuous.

She emphasises that some of the most effective initiatives to reduce a carbon footprint are simple and easy to implement and shared numerous examples of how hotels in particular can do this. These ranged from cutting down on paper and printer usage by moving to electronic guest billing to changing towels and sheets twice a week instead of daily. 

Her final piece of advice is about staying informed and keeping an eye on what other businesses are doing. Keeping up-to-date on the latest environmental legislation helps a business with planning and risk management. Knowing what new technologies are on the horizon can provide inspiration and ideas to become a leader in responsible business.