Survival of the Fittest? A Call for Hospitality to Incorporate Ecology Into Business Practice and Education

Abstract

Biodiversity and the science that addresses its conservation, loss, and recovery, including conservation biology and restoration ecology, are high on the contemporary global agenda. While the hospitality industry has taken major steps toward net carbon zero and even net positive business, we argue that it has another significant advance to make. The United Nations has dedicated 2021–2030 as the decade of ecosystem restoration, and along with it, several other organizations offer guidance on how businesses should approach the natural environment. Considering the role of hospitality as a consumer of nature, we call for the industry to implement these principles in practice through nature-based solutions and restorative and regenerative hospitality. To strengthen this transformation, we urge hospitality management education to include the basic concepts of ecology, biodiversity, and environmental science, along with their application, in curricula. By doing this, education can advance from presenting sustainability actions as a necessity into illustrating and justifying their need on a planetary scale. The change will facilitate the next step the hospitality industry must take in transforming its relationship with the natural environment.