Go Wellness and Sustainable or Go Home

From our little vantage point, we’ve been very insensitive to buzzwords, to the trendiest things over the years. We have always observed and rejected the tendency to talk about things half-heartedly, artificially, and superficially.

For these reasons, we have studied computer security issues with the idea of implementing them and not making big headlines about them. We looked at ISO quality certifications as a way of helping to transform our clients, not necessarily for the “stamp” of certification. And we’ve looked at Artificial Intelligence in terms of the things it can help us with, not to fill our speeches with jargon.

This is because we consider Wellness and Sustainability to be different things.

We know that consumption habits, adopting a more balanced lifestyle, and concerns about the planet’s future and the generations of our children who will inhabit it cannot be decreed. This has to get into people’s heads.

The idea that some EU directives alone will make a structural difference only fits in the heads of bureaucrats. This has to mean business. More business. More profitable business.

In this matter, I’m not at all sensitive to “guesswork” or wishful thinking. I recognize that there is still much more investment in greenwashing than in green.

But I’m also beginning to see a number of factors that seem to represent a pattern:

• The lack of control over energy spending and adopting alternative energies (e.g., solar panels) had a significant impact in 2022 when the energy crisis (there may be another one) forced a change and made many companies much better prepared. 
  
  
• Some of them started selling the solar energy they captured to the grid. A significant (albeit insufficient) part of public and tax support now has something to do with the adoption of energy efficiency measures. This is a fact and a direct link between sustainability and profitability.
  
  
• In the many Business Plans we have made and followed for the hotel industry, the impact of the inclusion of well-being programs on RevPar is impressive. Revenue obtained “outside the room” can represent between 25 and 50 percent of the former, with a significant part directly associated with diverse healing programs and practices.
  
  
• There is beginning to be information published by international sources (Global Wellness Institute) in which the impact of wellness practices on the average revenue generated per room and client and subsequently on the P&L is visible. It’s no longer just bombastic statements about how Wellness will represent X trillion euros of business someday. It’s P&L happening right now, live and in color.
  
  
• Another relevant element is that Wellness doesn’t seem to be something to play around with. Wellness is not a spa. If you’re lousy at implementing it, you’ll stay the same and have spent non-reproductive money. It’s better to do something seriously valued by the guests who matter most in terms of purchasing power.
  
  

In a country where undifferentiated tourism has a much larger share than it should, perhaps we should take a closer look at this. Yes, surfing and açaí kids are also important, but a man does not live by surfing alone.