Progress, Not Perfection: How the Cruise Industry Is Turning Sustainable Hospitality Into a Competitive Advantage
- Jun 3
- 8 min read
Sustainable Cruises: What would the ocean say if it could sit in on your next strategy meeting?
If you work in hospitality or travel, you've probably felt the pull of sustainability — the sense that something needs to change, but the overwhelming feeling that you don't quite know where to start. The budgets seem unclear. The language feels technical. And the pressure to do everything at once is paralyzing.
Sound familiar? You're not alone.
In a recent live panel recorded for The Conscious Check-in Podcast at Seatrade, host Amy Wald gathered four of the most innovative voices working at the intersection of sustainable hospitality and ocean conservation. What followed was one of the most grounded, no-nonsense conversations about turning sustainability from a cost center into a genuine competitive advantage.
Meet the panel:
Jones (Steve) — Director of Fundraising & Operations, Orca (whale and dolphin conservation NGO)
Will Pearson — Co-Founder, Ocean Bottle
Alex Schultz — CEO & Co-Founder, For Ocean (ocean cleanup company)
Tony Rossi — CSO, TerraCycle
Here's what they had to say — and why it matters far beyond the sustainable cruise industry.
Sustainable Hospitality Is No Longer Optional. But It Doesn't Have to Be Overwhelming.
One of the clearest threads running through this panel was a message that sounds simple but is genuinely transformative: you don't have to be perfect to make progress.
"Sustainability can truly become a competitive advantage," said Alex Schultz of For Ocean. "Our belief and vision is to try and get more brands to incorporate sustainability into their operations across the board — and to look at it as something that can help deliver results for the business."
That's a framing shift worth pausing on. For too long, sustainability has been positioned as a sacrifice — something you do despite the bottom line. But Schultz and his fellow panelists made a compelling case that in 2026, the brands that treat sustainability as a business strategy are winning.
Tony Rossi of TerraCycle backed this up with a striking real-world example: a vitamin and supplement brand they partnered with had been struggling to open new retailer doors for years. After leaning into sustainability as a core part of their pitch, they landed three major retail partners in just three months. "The last quarter, eight shows — we haven't even talked about price," Rossi said. The conversation had shifted to impact, and that's what opened doors.
The takeaway for hospitality professionals: consumers are voting with their dollars. Travelers increasingly want to know that their trip is leaving a place better than they found it. Businesses that can communicate a genuine sustainability story — not greenwash, but a real one — are gaining measurable market advantage.
The Science of Connection: How Orca Turns Guests Into Citizen Scientists
Perhaps one of the most unexpected insights from this panel came from Steve Jones of Orca, who made a quietly radical point: you don't need to be an expert to make a difference in conservation.
"You're always going to be scared of something until you understand it," Jones said. "So as an organization, our work is based fundamentally on citizen science — the idea that people from all different backgrounds can take part in scientific research."
His own story is proof. He'd never seen a whale or dolphin before joining Orca. Now he travels the world advising the shipping industry on protecting these animals.
Orca works directly with cruise lines to train crew, run enrichment and education programs onboard, and engage guests in real-time wildlife monitoring. The results? Thousands of people a year contributing sightings data, transforming how they see and relate to the ocean — sometimes after decades of sailing past it.
For hospitality operators of any kind, this is a masterclass in sustainable guest engagement strategies. It's not about lecturing guests with statistics. It's about giving them a role — a way to participate in something that matters. When guests feel like contributors rather than consumers, the entire experience shifts.
This kind of meaningful guest programming is exactly what distinguishes a good property from a destination people return to — and talk about. If your team needs support building out engagement frameworks that connect guests to your sustainability story, Greenluxe's staff training services are designed to make that translation happen.
Products as Proof: How Ocean Bottle Elevates the Guest Experience
Will Pearson of Ocean Bottle offered a different but equally compelling angle: the physical products your guests interact with are sustainability touchpoints — and they can do a lot of heavy lifting.
Ocean Bottle designs reusable water bottles where every bottle sold funds the collection of a set weight of ocean plastic. Each product tells a story, carries a brand's identity, and travels home with guests — becoming a walking billboard for the experience.
"21st century sustainability doesn't just have to be a compliance checklist," Pearson explained. "Our products act as an all-in-one guest experience, loyalty tool, and advertising billboard."
Their partnership with an expedition cruise line is a standout example: every guest onboard receives a fully customized Ocean Bottle, funding the collection of over a million kilos of plastic. Customers go home loving the product so much that they reach out asking where to buy another one.
This is the kind of story that illustrates how sustainable purchasing stops being a line item and starts becoming a guest loyalty engine. When the products you choose are designed with impact in mind, every amenity, every room, every touchpoint becomes part of the narrative you're telling. If you want to explore which sustainable products might fit your property or brand, Greenluxe's sustainable purchasing service helps you find and vet options that deliver both planet impact and ROI.
Start With Cigarette Butts: TerraCycle's Counterintuitive Advice
Tony Rossi has been working in sustainability for over 15 years. He's seen a lot of well-intentioned brands make the same mistake: trying to go from 0 to 100.
"People say, 'we've been doing nothing, and now we want to do everything — here is all the waste we generate, help us with it,'" Rossi explained. "That is very, very difficult."
His advice? Start with one or two items. Something novel, something that creates a conversation. For the cruise industry, that turned out to be cigarette butts.
Most people don't know that cigarette filters are made from plastic. When cruise line crew learned this through TerraCycle's program, it sparked curiosity — and momentum. That momentum eventually grew into broader recycling programs. Some of TerraCycle's largest global partnerships started with cigarette butts or coffee capsules and have evolved into zero-waste operations.
There's also a logistics reality specific to maritime hospitality: you can't send a FedEx to the middle of the ocean. That's why Rossi emphasized building port partnerships as a critical part of the waste management supply chain. Ports become aggregation points — and the more stakeholders you bring into that ecosystem, the more efficient and scalable the whole system becomes.
The bigger philosophical point: having a financially sustainable model isn't something to be embarrassed about — it's what makes sustainability last. If there's no return on investment, programs die. TerraCycle partners with brands like Lavazza and British American Tobacco precisely because the model delivers results. That's a lesson every hospitality leader should internalize.
Crew Are Your Most Underrated Sustainability Asset
Here's something every panelist agreed on without hesitation: if you're not bringing your crew into the sustainability story, you're leaving your biggest opportunity on the table.
"People who live and work at sea are the most passionate about protecting it," Jones said. "That's their home. When it comes to implementing what you might be putting in place shoreside, bringing the crew on that journey with you is essential."
Orca has trained tens of thousands of seafarers over 25 years. They don't just go to the shoreside management team — they go directly to the bridge. They learn the real challenges crew members face, make the story relevant to their lives, and the results follow: more adherence to voluntary environmental measures, more knowledge, and genuine engagement.
Rossi put it memorably with the NASA analogy: when a president toured the facility and asked a janitor what he was doing, the answer was, "Mr. President, I'm helping put a man on the moon." It doesn't matter what role someone holds — when they understand the mission, they become part of it. That shift in identity from employee to impact-maker is powerful for morale, retention, and ultimately, guest experience.
As Amy noted, the ripple effect is real: guests often return to a ship or property because of one crew member who made them feel something. When crew feel proud of what their organization stands for, that energy transfers. If you're thinking about how to build that culture, Greenluxe's sustainability marketing services can help you shape the internal and external narrative cohesively.
Mega Ships: Sustainability Threat or Scalable Opportunity?
The panel closed with a provocation: as mega ships carrying 6,000–10,000 guests become the norm, are they a sustainability nightmare or a chance to scale impact?
The answer, perhaps predictably, was it depends — but the nuance was important.
"The way I would think about it is not how big is the ship, but how early in the chain was sustainability considered when the ship was being built," Jones said. A mega ship built with sustainability from the drawing board — designed with clean propulsion, waste systems, energy efficiency — can be more sustainable per passenger than a smaller, older vessel.
Schultz dreamed bigger: "What if 10,000 people on that ship were actually having a positive impact? What if every trip raised the environmental quality of the destination rather than degraded it?"
Rossi added a practical caution: the people responsible for sustainability and waste management rarely have a seat at the table when ships are being designed. That needs to change. Invite them early. Prevention is always cheaper than remediation.
The opportunity is enormous. With 35 million passengers traveling on cruise ships annually, this industry sits at a unique intersection of global visibility and operational scale. The question isn't if sustainability will become standard — it's who moves first and captures the advantage.
5 Takeaways for Hospitality Professionals
Start with one thing. Pick one waste stream, one product swap, one training program. Build from there. Progress, not perfection.
Make it a story. Every touchpoint — the water bottle, the lanyards, the crew uniform — can carry your sustainability narrative if you design it that way.
Bring the crew in early. Your team members are your most credible advocates. Educate, incentivize, and give them the language to share the mission.
Think ROI, not just virtue. Sustainability programs that don't have a financial model won't last. Find the overlap between impact and return.
Build partnerships, not solo programs. Ports, NGOs, product partners, certifications — the brands that win are the ones building ecosystems, not going it alone.
The Bottom Line
This conversation at Seatrade was a reminder that sustainable hospitality isn't a luxury reserved for the biggest brands with the biggest budgets. It's a mindset shift, a story waiting to be told, and a competitive advantage hiding in plain sight.
Whether you manage a boutique hotel, a cruise line, or a resort, the principles are the same: start where you are, engage your people, choose products that prove your values, and tell the story honestly.
The ocean is watching. And according to this panel, it has one message above all else: talk to each other. Work together.
🎧 Want to hear the full conversation? This episode of The Conscious Check-in — recorded live at Seatrade — is now available across all major platforms.
🎙️ Listen to The Conscious Check-in
🌿 Ready to Build Your Sustainability Story?
If this episode sparked ideas for your property or brand, Amy and the Greenluxe team are here to help you turn those ideas into a clear, profitable strategy.
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