What IS the hospitality of sustainability?

For those of you new to this blog, please check about the About the Project page. But for those too tired to click the mouse (yes, I admit it, I've been THAT tired before) here's a quick explanation about WHY sustainability is essentially hospitable.

This study is part of my Final Project towards my Masters in Sustainable Design but it has reaches far beyond the walls of a classroom. Why the hospitality industry you may ask? Why focus on hotels and restaurants? -- The Hospitality Industry is one of the world's largest export industries, present in every corner of the world (in the richest countries in the world and also in the poorest -- where you can't even step outside of the hotel compound due to violence and civil unrest; in the most populated and also the most remote -- cruises to Antartic anyone?; in landlocked countries and also on islands slowly sinking due to climate change). The sheer size, buying power, market influence, and overall reach of the industry represents a huge opportunity to initiate change.

Utilizing the spirit of service inherent in the sector I hope to initiate change through the power of simple hospitality. People helping people, service with a smile, service from the heart -- whatever slogan it goes by, the values are the same. The goal of this project is to create a environmental program/system built around the empowerment of individual associates - from line staff to management - to make a difference. In other words, building off of a hotel brand's core values in order to push sustainability forward through management to associates to the guests-- so those who live and breathe the brand and service can start to live and breathe sustainability in the communities around them.