Responsible Hotels - Interview

2011 November

Interview with Yvette Jong, Sustainable Tourism expert on China, Sustainability and Change

by Carlos Buj

Today I have the pleasure of sharing this interesting talk with Yvette Jong, founder of Craft House, a consultancy company based in Hong Kong. However, she  is a New York born hotelier with a degree in hotel management from Cornell University and 13 years of global hospitality experience. In her early career, she cofounded a nonprofit organization focused on community based tourism before becoming an executive manager in hotel operations, director of human resources and opening manager for the New York and London premier member clubs and boutique hotels, Soho House and High Road House. In 2006, she became a consultant with Horwath HTL where she developed concepts and feasibility studies for more than 45 hotel and destination projects across Asia. Yvette is a LEED  Green Associate.

After I discovered her work titled “Towards the business case for sustainable hotels in Asia”,  I arranged through Yvette’s Twitter (@CraftHouseLLC) this interview on green hotels, sustainability in tourism and other topics.

Yvette, you started a Non-profit which supported Community-Based Tourism before going into the business world and you still support a local project in Bali. What can you tell us about this experience?

Yvette: Sustainable tourism has always been one of my core beliefs — and it's what led me into this industry in the first place. What I've learned is that the most meaningful sustainability work happens when it's rooted in genuine relationships with local communities, not imposed from the outside. The properties I admire most aren't the ones with the most certifications. They're the ones that have built programs around natural resource management, created real employment pathways, supported local education, and made environmental stewardship part of how they operate every single day. That's not a marketing strategy. It's a philosophy. And I believe it's the only version of hospitality that will still feel relevant twenty years from now.

Could you give a couple of examples of programs that build community programs on natural resource management ?

Yvette: InterContinental Moorea in French Polynesia and Shangri-La Fijian Resort and Spa are two strong examples — both engage local communities in coral reef protection and programs to combat destructive fishing practices. What I find most interesting about these models is that they create genuine value for both sides. The developer gets a differentiated experience and a story worth telling. The researchers and local communities get funding and infrastructure they might not otherwise access. When a client recently asked whether they should launch a sea turtle program, my answer was: that's not your decision to make unilaterally. Engage research centers, commission an environmental impact assessment, build real partnerships. The best conservation programs aren't hotel amenities. They're genuine collaborations.

In your company’s site you claim to “build successful hospitality businesses in one holistic process by streamlining and integrating creative, development and operating strategic thinking and execution”. This may sound a bit intimidating for some conventional hotels. Could you elaborate a bit on what this really means for a hotel in practice?

Yvette: It is intimidating — because it challenges a model the industry has relied on for decades. The traditional process works in silos. The architect does their job. The operator does theirs. The brand consultant does theirs. Nobody is talking to each other in real time, and by the time everyone has finished, you have a beautiful building that doesn't quite work operationally, a brand that doesn't quite reflect the location, and a guest experience that feels like it was designed by committee — because it was.

What I created Craft House to do is integrate all of that thinking from the very beginning. Brand strategy, operational logic, financial modeling, guest experience design — these should all be happening simultaneously, not sequentially. The decisions you make at concept stage are the ones that are most expensive to undo later. I believe the industry will eventually move in this direction entirely. The developers who figure it out first will build better assets at lower cost with stronger returns.

It seems that there is few people or none that understand all the implications and dimensions of the tourism activity. Should tourism professionals have a more general vision of tourism beyond their specific field?

Yvette: Absolutely — and I think the industry is about to be forced into that broader view whether it's ready or not. The travelers making decisions today are not evaluating hotels the way they did ten years ago. They're choosing based on values, experiences, community connection, environmental impact. They're reading reviews written by other travelers, not marketing copy written by the hotel. Social media has made every guest a publisher. That changes everything about how hospitality needs to be designed, operated, and communicated.

The professionals who will shape the next generation of this industry aren't the ones who know the most about rooms division or revenue management — though that knowledge matters. They're the ones who can think laterally. Who understand behavioral psychology, urban planning, environmental science, cultural anthropology — and who can apply those lenses to how we create spaces where people feel genuinely alive. The industry is expanding, and the people leading it need to expand with it.

You wrote a document on the business case for green hotels in Asia? Why does going green make business sense for hotels?

Yvette: The honest answer is that for most developers right now, it doesn't feel like it makes business sense — and that's exactly the problem we set out to address. There's a perception that going green costs more, compromises the guest experience, and is ultimately a marketing exercise rather than a financial one. The purpose of our study with WWF and Horwath HTL was to challenge that assumption with real data from real properties.

What we found is that certain sustainability practices — energy efficiency, water management, local sourcing, waste reduction — deliver measurable returns. Not abstract environmental benefits, but actual dollar savings that show up on the P&L. In some markets, sustainable properties can command a rate premium. In all markets, they tend to attract stronger staff loyalty and lower turnover, which is one of the most significant cost drivers in hospitality.

But here's my bigger argument: the properties that treat sustainability as a financial decision today will be the ones that are well-positioned when — not if — guests start making decisions based on it. I believe that day is coming faster than most of the industry expects. The question isn't whether sustainability will matter to travelers. It's whether you'll have built it into your operation before it becomes a requirement rather than a differentiator.

It seems that communicating “green” is sometimes even more difficult than being green. What tips can you provide to hotels who are commited to be moer sustainable but don’t know what to tell about it?

Yvette: My first piece of advice is always: don't call yourself green. The moment you make that claim, you invite scrutiny — and in most cases, the scrutiny will find something. I've seen developers spend enormous energy on green marketing while their actual practices lag behind the language. That's a reputational risk that will only grow as travelers become more sophisticated and information becomes more accessible.

What I recommend instead is radical specificity. Don't say "we are committed to sustainable sourcing." Say "87% of our food supply comes from within 50 kilometers, sourced from these three local farms." Don't say "we care about the environment." Say "we have reduced water consumption by 34% since 2009 using these specific measures." Specific claims are harder to make — but they're also impossible to dismiss. And they build the kind of trust that vague language never can.

The properties that will be most credible on sustainability in the long run are the ones that document what they actually do, publish it transparently, and let the work speak for itself. A well-written sustainability policy that is honest about what you've achieved and what you're still working on will do more for your reputation than any certification or marketing campaign.

What is your opinion on the numerous certification schemes? How do  see the future regarding this issue?

Yvette: I'm skeptical of most of them — not because certification is a bad idea in principle, but because in practice, many schemes reward compliance with a checklist rather than genuine environmental performance. A hotel can achieve certification by ticking boxes that have very little to do with its actual impact on the local ecosystem, community, or carbon footprint.

What concerns me most is that certification has become a shortcut — a way for properties to signal sustainability without doing the harder work of genuinely integrating it into how they operate. Some of the most authentically sustainable properties I've worked with, like Bambu Indah in Bali, build with bamboo, source entirely locally, and operate in deep relationship with their surrounding community — and can't get certified because the frameworks weren't designed for the way they work. That's a significant failure of the certification model.

I think the future belongs to properties that benchmark honestly against their own goals, measure their performance transparently, and publish the results — whether or not they carry a certification mark. Guests are becoming sophisticated enough to tell the difference. And I believe the day will come when a property's actual, verified environmental performance will matter more to travelers than any sticker on the door.

Is any particularity in Asia? How is sustainability perceived different in East and West?

Yvette: The differences are real but they're also changing faster than most people expect. In parts of Asia — particularly emerging markets where rapid development is still the priority — sustainability is often seen as a luxury concern, something for wealthy Western travelers rather than a genuine operational imperative. I understand that perception, but I think it's shortsighted. The environmental pressures in Asia are in many cases more acute than in the West. Water scarcity, coastal erosion, deforestation, air quality — these aren't abstract concerns. They're existential ones for many of the destinations we're building in.

What gives me optimism is the generational shift I'm already seeing. Younger travelers across Asia — particularly those who have studied or traveled internationally — are making values-based decisions that their parents' generation simply didn't. That shift will accelerate. The developers who build for that next generation of traveler, rather than the current one, will have a significant advantage.

How does sustainability in tourism with e-learning? Is this kind of education suitable to produce change in organisations?

Yvette: Education is foundational — and I don't think the industry takes it seriously enough. The most beautifully designed sustainable hotel in the world will underperform its potential if the team operating it doesn't understand why the decisions were made and what they're trying to achieve. Sustainability has to be a culture, not a policy document.

What I find most effective isn't formal training programs, but embedding sustainability thinking into how teams are recruited, onboarded, and led. When the person running housekeeping understands why water conservation matters — not just that there's a protocol to follow, but why it matters for the community they live in — the behavior change is real and lasting. That's much harder to achieve through a module than through leadership that genuinely lives these values.

Are there any policies and regulations that the public sector can use to make tourism more sustainable? Ecotax, flight-tax, visas, etc?

Yvette: There's a role for regulation — but I think the most durable change will come from the market, not from government. The properties and destinations that get ahead of this will do so because their guests demanded it, their investors required it, and their staff expected it — not because a regulation forced their hand. Regulation tends to set a floor, not a ceiling. The most interesting operators will always be working well above the floor.

That said, I do think we'll see significant regulatory movement in the coming years — particularly around transparency and claims. Right now, a hotel can say almost anything about its environmental practices with very little accountability. I don't think that will remain true indefinitely. The industry that gets ahead of that shift — that builds genuine, verifiable sustainability practices now — will be far better positioned than the one that waits to be regulated into it.

China is the most populated country in the world, so it seems that its approach to sustainability is very relevant. Your example sounds like a good example, but will China learn to be green soon enough?

Yvette: China's trajectory on sustainability is one of the most interesting and complex stories in the world right now. The observation you're making — that countries move from necessity to excess to conscious choice — is real, and China is somewhere in that middle phase. The instinct to consume conspicuously, to use things because you paid for them, to equate luxury with abundance — that's not unique to China. It's what rapid wealth creation looks like everywhere.

But I'm more optimistic about China than I might have been a few years ago. There's a growing segment of Chinese travelers — younger, internationally experienced, increasingly values-driven — who are already making decisions that look very different from the previous generation. And at the national level, China has made commitments on renewable energy and environmental performance that are more ambitious than many Western governments. The timeline is uncertain. But the direction, I think, is right.

The cycle you're describing takes time. Education accelerates it. And the tourism industry, when it does its job well, can be one of the most powerful forms of education there is — connecting people to places, cultures, and communities in ways that genuinely shift how they see the world.

Thank you Yvette, it’s been a very interesting talk.