Deep Travel and the Say-Do Gap: What Sustainable Hospitality Professionals Need to Hear
- Apr 22
- 7 min read
What if the biggest obstacle to sustainable hospitality isn't budget, technology, or regulation — it's the language being used to talk about it?
Survey after survey shows travelers say they want to make responsible choices. But when it comes time to book, those good intentions rarely translate into action. Sound familiar? This is what researchers call the "say-do gap," and it's one of the most persistent frustrations in sustainable hospitality today.
In a recent episode of The Conscious Check-in, host Amy Wald sat down with Richard Lindberg — co-founder of One Planet Journey and a veteran entrepreneur with roots in tech, impact investing, and sustainable tourism — to dig into why this gap exists and, more importantly, what the industry can do about it.
Whether you're a hotelier, destination marketer, or sustainability consultant, what follows will challenge some assumptions you might not have realized you were holding.
From Tech Founder to Slow Traveler: Richard's Unlikely Path
Richard's road to eco luxury travel advocacy wasn't planned. He started out in university studying business, stumbled into a mobile software startup in the pre-iPhone era, and after a successful exit turned his attention to sustainability — not because it was trendy, but because it felt urgent.
"This was 2009, and there was a lot of noise about the climate because there was a big UN meeting in Copenhagen," Richard explains. "I also started a business for four and a half years and we didn't have more than maybe an hour of discussion about the whole topic."
That honesty is refreshing — and it set the tone for everything that followed. Richard launched a nonprofit focused on sustainability education for university students, moved into impact investing in London, and eventually built a 200-point sustainability rating and review platform for hotels, restaurants, and cities. That business thrived until the pandemic forced its doors shut.
What the pandemic gave him instead was time. Richard and his wife spent five to six months driving across Europe, staying a month in each place, living far more like locals than tourists.
"We got to experience life more as a local. We connected with people and it was unhurried in a way," he says. "And when we got back home, I said, I've got to tell more people about this."
That impulse became One Planet Journey — a digital magazine, community platform, and mission-driven organization built to create deep connections between travelers, destinations, local communities, and travel brands.
What Is Deep Travel — and Why Should Hospitality Professionals Care?
One Planet Journey didn't want to just talk about sustainability in the conventional sense. Instead, they landed on a concept called Deep Travel — a term that existed before them but hadn't been fully developed.
"What it is essentially, at least for us, is the question of why do I travel?" Richard explains. "Because normally you just obsess about the where."
Deep Travel shifts the focus from destination to motivation. At its core, it's rooted in:
Personal interests and passions that guide where you go — not just Instagram trends
A genuine desire to connect with local communities, culture, and the people who actually live in a place
Personal development as part of the experience
A bridge between travelers, destinations, communities, and travel brands
Richard is careful to distinguish Deep Travel from other popular frameworks like "experiential" or "transformative" travel, which tend to center on the individual. "We see Deep Travel as a bridge between the sectors," he explains. "And that is our mission at One Planet Journey — to create these deep connections."
For hospitality professionals, this is a significant reframe. Instead of leading with sustainability credentials and certification logos, the opportunity is to create the conditions for genuine connection: culturally rich programming, authentic local partnerships, slower-paced experiences, and spaces designed for guests to actually be present.
Responsible, Regenerative, Sustainable: Clearing Up the Confusion
Richard fields this terminology question constantly, and his answers are sharper than most.
Sustainable travel is, in his view, primarily an industry term — a baseline framework for understanding environmental, social, and financial responsibility. "You don't go around as a traveler saying, 'I'm a sustainable traveler,'" he notes flatly. "And it doesn't happen." He also flags that the word has become politically charged, causing many people to disengage before the conversation even begins.
Responsible travel is slightly more guest-facing, but carries similar baggage.
Regenerative travel is its own distinct concept. At ITB Berlin, Richard heard thought leader Anna Pollock articulate it clearly: it is not "sustainable travel on steroids." It's about centering local communities first — the idea that a place doesn't exist for tourism; tourism is a bonus when it's integrated well. Richard sees genuine value in the framework but acknowledges it's still difficult for everyday travelers to grasp practically.
Deep Travel is One Planet Journey's contribution — a concept deliberately designed to connect emotionally with the traveler. No lectures. No guilt. No doom.
"I don't like the shaming and the guilting and the dooming and all those kind of things," Richard says. "I think personally, a lot of the reasons [sustainability] hasn't gone further is because of this type of communication style."
This is a signal worth heeding. How a hotel or destination communicates its sustainability story matters just as much as the story itself. Communicating your sustainability initiatives authentically — in language that resonates with guests rather than lectures them — is the bridge between doing the work and actually influencing behavior.
The Say-Do Gap: One Word Closes It
The conversation gets bracingly honest when Amy raises the say-do gap. The evidence is clear: travelers claim to want to make responsible choices, but booking behavior tells a different story. So what actually moves the needle?
Richard's answer is a single word: default.
"The traveler shouldn't be required to sit there and go through a lot of data and choices," he argues. "What are they going to choose? One certification over another when they don't understand what the certification is about? Make it default."
This is an industry-level call to action, not an individual one. Hotels and travel brands that embed sustainable practices into every standard touchpoint — without requiring guests to opt in, seek out, or interpret jargon — are far more likely to drive behavior change at meaningful scale.
Amy pushed back with a fair question: doesn't the traveler bear some responsibility? Richard's response was nuanced. Yes — behaviorally. Don't treat someone else's city like a theme park. Respect the community you're visiting. But asking guests to carbon-calculate their flights or decode which of twelve competing certifications is the most credible? That's too much to expect.
"I personally don't think that framing everything as a gift to the planet is the best motivator," Richard says.
The practical implication for hoteliers: build sustainability into the standard experience, not the premium option. Default vegetarian or plant-forward menus. Automatic linen reuse as the norm, not the opt-in. EV charging as a standard amenity. These quiet, visible signals tell guests the right choice has already been made for them — without a single word about sustainability.
Certifications: A Useful Baseline — But Know Their Limits
No conversation about green hospitality is complete without tackling certifications, and Richard offers a refreshingly measured view.
One Planet Journey has interviewed executives from Green Key and the CEO of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC), which accredits many of the industry's leading frameworks. Richard's take: certifications are genuinely valuable — but not primarily as guest-facing marketing tools.
"To ask for the traveler to recognize these things and understand that — again, I think it's a fool's errand," he says.
Where certifications do add real value:
Internal alignment: They give properties a structured framework to understand, measure, and improve across environmental, social, and economic dimensions.
Staff motivation: A certification tells your team that leadership takes this seriously. That matters more than most operators realize. "It's good motivating for the staff to know that the company they're working for is taking this issue seriously," Richard notes. "We shouldn't neglect that aspect."
Industry credibility: At a B2B level, certification signals that a property meets a recognized standard — which influences partners, press, and procurement decisions.
Amy puts it well: "The misconception is that you adopt a certification before you do the work. It's there to organize your efforts, make them deeper, create deeper impact, and then reward you for your hard work."
If you're a hotelier navigating the crowded certification landscape, Greenluxe's certification support services can help you identify the right path for your property, align your team around it, and build the practices that earn the credential — not just wear it.
Key Takeaways for Hospitality Professionals
Here are the most actionable insights from Richard and Amy's conversation:
Drop the jargon, protect the mission. Words like "sustainable" and "responsible" can alienate before they inspire. Anchor your guest communications in experience, connection, and authenticity — not sustainability-speak.
Make sustainability the default. Stop asking guests to opt in. Embed eco-friendly choices into every standard operating procedure, amenity, and menu option so the bar is already set.
Use certifications as an internal compass, not just an external badge. The real ROI of a certification lives in staff alignment, operational improvement, and a culture that attracts and retains purpose-driven employees.
Speak the traveler's language. Deep Travel, slow travel, meaningful connection — these resonate. Build your programming and messaging around why guests travel, not just where.
Fewer, better trips is a win for everyone. Richard's sustainable travel hack doubles as a business insight: guests who stay longer, connect more deeply, and spend more intentionally generate better outcomes for your community, your team, and your bottom line.
The Bottom Line
Richard Lindberg brings something rare to the sustainable hospitality conversation: a technologist's pragmatism fused with a genuine, lived commitment to travel that's better for everyone involved. His concept of Deep Travel isn't rebranding for its own sake — it's an honest attempt to meet travelers where they are, emotionally and practically.
The say-do gap won't close overnight. But the shift Richard describes — from guilt-based messaging to authentic connection, from certification theater to embedded sustainability as the industry standard — is exactly the kind of thinking that actually moves things forward.
And if you want to hear the full conversation, including Richard's unforgettable story about eating five sourdough pizzas in the mountains above the Amalfi Coast (yes, five — no judgment here), don't miss this episode.
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