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Why Sustainable Hospitality Has Nothing to Do With Eating Your Broccoli

  • 2 days ago
  • 8 min read


Sustainable Hospitality: What if the choice between a five-star vacation and a responsible one was never a real choice to begin with?


That's the core argument Costas Christ—one of the world's foremost voices in sustainable travel—made on the latest episode of The Conscious Check-in on the Road, recorded live at the Palms Hotel in Miami. And it's the kind of argument that, once you hear it, you can't unhear. For hospitality professionals navigating the growing pressure around sustainable hospitality, this episode offers something rare: clarity.


Joined by host Amy Wald and Tanja Morariu, Director of Marketing and Sustainability at the Palms Hotel, the conversation unpacks decades of lived experience across conservation, ecotourism, and hotel operations—while pulling zero punches on greenwashing, certifications, and what the future of travel actually looks like.


Here's what we took away.


Three people sit in a semicircle on gold-framed chairs on a covered outdoor patio, engaged in conversation. On the left, a man in a plaid button-down shirt and dark trousers gestures with one hand as he speaks. In the middle, a woman in a white blazer over a brown satin dress holds two brown branded cards and listens. On the right, a woman in a rust-orange short-sleeved jumpsuit turns toward the others. Behind them, a white lattice railing and lush tropical greenery. The logo for 'The Conscious Check-in' appears in the lower left corner.

The "Eat Your Broccoli" Problem in the Hotel Industry


Costas has spent four decades watching the travel industry wrestle with a false choice it created for itself: you can either have a luxurious, enjoyable trip or do the right thing for the planet. Not both.


He calls this the "eat your broccoli" problem.


"The notion that to do good as a traveler you have to eat your broccoli because it's good for you—no. You're not going to like the room, the food might not be good, the service might be bad, but at least they're caring for the environment. No. We don't have to make those choices."


The shift that's happened over the last decade—and that the Palms Hotel embodies—is proof that the best guest experiences and the most responsible ones are increasingly the same experience. Think: a sunset dinner using locally sourced seafood, a beach cleanup followed by gelato, exploring the Florida Everglades with a member of the Miccosukee tribe instead of a generic airboat tour.


These aren't compromises. These are differentiators.


For hoteliers, the takeaway is direct: stop framing sustainability as a constraint and start positioning it as the product enhancement it actually is. Guests who leave feeling they contributed something beyond their own enjoyment are guests who come back—and who tell others.


Sustainability Is Everyone's Job—Not Just Marketing's


One of the episode's most nuanced conversations centered on a question that divides the industry: should sustainability sit inside the marketing department?


Tanja Morariu’'s answer was honest: at the Palms, it grew out of marketing—specifically, a 2009 renovation and rebranding around the ethos of "inspired by nature." That positioning naturally demanded environmental responsibility, and the sustainability program followed. Green Key certification, an Aveda spa, a farm-to-table restaurant, reusable key cards, sea turtle programs, partnerships with the Everglades Foundation, the Coral Restoration Foundation, and the Blue Scholars Initiative—all of it flowed from a marketing identity that was genuine.


But Tanja was equally clear that sustainability can never live in one department alone:

"Sustainability is so multifaceted. I don't do sustainability within the marketing department only. I work with every single department in the hotel. I need buy-in from engineering. I need buy-in from housekeeping. I need buy-in from our owners."

Costas pushed this further with a question that reframes the whole debate: should we even be asking which department sustainability belongs in? If hospitality's future means that positive environmental impact is a given—the way good guest service is already a given—then sustainability stops being a department entirely. It becomes the standard.


The practical implication? Sustainability training can't be a one-time onboarding checkbox. It needs to be embedded so deeply into hotel culture that a pool server can speak to why plastic water bottles were eliminated, and a front desk agent can explain what a reusable key means without missing the opportunity to share the what translates into loyalty, values. 


That kind of fluency doesn't happen by accident. It happens through intentional staff training and a leadership team that treats sustainability as core operations—not a PR function.


Certifications Matter. But Only If You Actually Live Them.


Amy brought up a subject she's passionate about: the gap between earning a sustainability certification and genuinely practicing what it represents.


She shared what many in the industry already know but rarely say out loud—that some hotels pursue certifications primarily for the logo on their website, then let the practices slide once the audit is done. The result? A plaque at the front desk that the reception staff can't explain.


Costas described exactly this scenario: checking into a hotel that proudly displayed its sustainability certification, asking the front desk agent about it, and being told, "You'll have to speak to management."


"That should never happen."


Tanja's perspective was grounding: earning a rigorous certification— which the Palms holds, and is part of Beyond Green requires a multi-hour audit across every department—is genuinely hard work. The question isn't whether to get certified. It's whether you're going to honor that work continuously or let it atrophy between renewal cycles.


"Just keep up the hard work and keep on pushing. Always remain at that level and try pushing a little bit further. So then two years down the line when you need to re-certify—you're not starting over."


Sustainability is a journey, not a destination. It's the same logic as guest service: no hotel ever decides guest service is "solved" and stops thinking about it. The same perpetual improvement mindset applies to sustainability—and the hotels that internalize this are the ones building lasting reputations, not just logos.


If you're evaluating where your property stands on sustainability certification, the real question isn't "what do we need to check off?" but "what does this actually mean for how we operate every day?"


You Are Not in the Business of Selling Hotel Rooms


This might be the single most important reframe in the entire episode—and it applies directly to hospitality marketing teams and C-suites alike.


Costas made the point plainly: hotels don't sell rooms. They sell nature and culture. The rooms, the service, the spa—these are the delivery mechanism. The product is the place.

"The real product that they sell is nature and culture. And if it's the product they sell, the first question on their mind needs to be: Do I have enough product to supply my demand? What am I doing to protect it? What am I doing to save it? You lose nature, you lose tourism."


He used the Palms Hotel as a living example: it's an urban property in Miami, and yet its guests are consistently drawn to the natural environment. The beach 50 yards away. The Everglades an hour's drive. The reef offshore. The natural world is the product—and protecting it isn't just an ethical position, it's a business imperative.


This thinking connects directly to his Kenya origin story. In 1979, at 19 years old, Costas found himself working on a Harvard wildlife research project in Northern Kenya when he witnessed the simmering conflict between park rangers and the local Samburu people being excluded from their own land—until villagers attempted to burn down the one tourism lodge in the park. None of the lodge's profits benefited local communities. And that rupture planted the seed for everything that followed: four decades of work building a model of tourism where nature, culture, and community are intertwined—not extracted.


The three pillars of travel as a force for good, as he frames it: nature, culture, and community. When local people benefit from tourism, they become partners in protecting the very natural assets that make a destination worth visiting.


For hospitality professionals, the question this raises is urgent: are your conservation commitments an add-on, or are they fundamental to your business strategy? If the Serengeti—the last great land migration on Earth, 2.1 million animals crossing 7,000 square miles—is the kind of place tourism can help save, then nature-based tourism that puts community benefit at the center is quite simply better business.


Wellness and Sustainability: You Cannot Have One Without the Other


Amy raised a tension that's hard to ignore right now: why is the luxury hospitality industry rushing to brand itself around wellness while remaining visibly allergic to the word "sustainable"?


The answer Costas offered was as clear as it was uncomfortable: marketing opportunism. Wellness is trending. Supplements are booming. So hospitality brands are pivoting hard toward wellness language and programming—without connecting it to the operational changes that make wellness real.


"You cannot have wellness without sustainability. Because for decades in the world of responsible travel and sustainable best practices, there have been discussions of reducing chemical use inside properties, using non-toxic chemicals for cleaning in rooms, purified drinking water."


A hotel that talks about wellness but fumigates its rooms with synthetic fragrances and fills plastic bottles with filtered water is not a wellness property. It's a brand story with no story behind it. And in the age of social media—where travelers can fact-check a property's claims before they've even unpacked—that gap is increasingly dangerous.


This is also where sustainable brand storytelling becomes a genuine competitive advantage. Marketing that accurately translates what a hotel actually does—non-toxic cleaning, reusable key cards, locally sourced menus, reef-safe amenities—into a compelling guest story is not greenwashing. It's the job. And it's the kind of storytelling in hospitality that builds trust over time rather than eroding it.


Key Takeaways for Hospitality Leaders


  • Reframe the value proposition. Sustainable practices aren't a trade-off for guests—they're an amplifier of the guest experience. Start communicating them as features, not footnotes.

  • Train every touchpoint. From the pool server to the concierge to the front desk, every staff member should be able to articulate at least one sustainability practice and why it matters. Fluency builds credibility.

  • Treat your certification as a floor, not a finish line. Earning Green Key, GSTC, or another rigorous certification is the beginning of a commitment—not the end of a process. Continuous improvement is what separates leaders from logo-collectors.

  • Connect conservation to revenue. If your destination's natural assets are your actual product, protecting them is protecting your business. Build conservation partnerships into your brand narrative, not just your CSR report.

  • Resist the term treadmill. Ecotourism. Regenerative tourism. Conscious tourism. Fair trade tourism. As Costas puts it: "Don't get hung up on what they call it. Just focus on what they're doing." The same goes for your own property—act, then communicate.


Final Thoughts


This episode of The Conscious Check-in is a masterclass in what the future of sustainable hospitality actually looks like—and who's already building it. Costas Christ brings the weight of four decades and the kind of origin story that makes everything click. Tanja Morariu brings the operational reality of what it takes to embed sustainability into a hotel that guests genuinely love.


The throughline is simple: the best hospitality and the most responsible hospitality are becoming the same thing. And the hotels that figure that out first will have a meaningful advantage over those still treating sustainability as a check-box or a cost center.


There's a lot more in the full conversation—including Costas on Bhutan's groundbreaking Mindfulness City project, Belize's role in the birth of ecotourism, and why he'd spend his last meal in a Maine blueberry field with the bears.


Proudly partnering with CleanCore for this series.

CleanCore’s aqueous ozone technology turns water, oxygen, and electricity into a powerful disinfectant cleaner—helping hospitality businesses reduce chemical use, eliminate unnecessary plastic packaging, lower recurring costs, and simplify housekeeping operations. Because the solution is generated on-site through a refillable system, teams can clean more efficiently without constantly ordering, storing, and disposing of conventional products.

Learn more about CleanCore’s hospitality pilot and its solutions for laundry and ice machines at CleanCoreSol.com.


Listen to the Full Episode


Don't miss the full conversation with Costas Christ and Tanja Morariu.


Ready to Turn Your Sustainability Story Into a Competitive Advantage?


Whether your property is beginning its sustainability journey or deepening a commitment that's already underway, Greenluxe works with luxury hospitality brands to turn genuine practices into powerful storytelling and measurable results.


👉 Book a 1:1 with Amy to explore what that looks like for your property.


 
 
 

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