DESMA Center Took Part as Speaker in the Sustainable Hospitality Conference - How to Reduce Visitor Numbers but Retain Profitability
Most Valued Business (MVB) Indonesia--an international organization that empowers concerned customers by seeking out and highlighting that are taking the right approaches to sustainbility, ethical employment, environmental friendliness and best business practices held a Sustainable Hospitality Conference that brings together all the hospitality business stakeholders in a forum to discuss on challenges and strategies that can be implemented in creating a sustainability in business practices. The conference was held on 11 March 2020 at Auditorium of Institut Français Indonesia in Jakarta.
The sessions were divided into 3 main session. Session 1: Quantity VS Quality:How to Reduce the Visitors Numbers but Retain Profitability. The speakers of the session are Wiwik Mahdayani, Founder & Direktur and Madame Susan Santos de Cardenas, President & CEO of Society for Sustainable Tourism and Development Inc (SSTDI), Green Destination Southeast Asia Representative and Partner, and the Spouse of the Ambassador of the Republic of Peru for Indonesia.
Session 2: Changing the Paradigm of the Hospitality Industry: The Restaurant and Cafe Industry has to Work Closer with Recyling Industry and its Supplies to Create Seamless Sustainable Supply Chain. The speakers of the session are M. Bijaksana Junerosano Founder & CEO Waste4Change; Anthony Cottan, President Director Starbucks and Bo Holmgreen, Founder & CEO Scholars of Sustenance.
Session 3: Protecting the Future: The Hotel Industry has to Change its Practices, the Food Industry Needs to Learn about Nature and the Whole Industry has to Change its Source of Materials to Protect the Future. The speakers of the session are Kevin Girard, General Manager Hilton Bandung Hotel and David Christian, Founder & CEO Evo&Co.
Wiwik Mahdayani, within that occasion underlined on the importance of paradigm shifting that tourism destinations should not only using quantity/visitor arrivals numbers to measure the standard of success. The tourism destinations should seek for quality tourism to measure the succed of tourism destination. A high quality destination will provide the experiences for the visitors, profitability, and values to impact it's surrounding.
The carrying capacity which highlighted how many visitors can come to a destination at one time, visitor flow, visitation time management, managing visitors to ensure high quality experience for visitors and to measure the impact of visitation to the destination. Wiwik Mahdayani also highlighted that overtourism is the result of bad planning and bad management. In her presentation, she also introduced tools that can be applied at the destinations to measure and implement sustainability variables at the destinations.
