Sustainable Hospitality Begins With Better Business Decisions

Dimitris Manikis And Jason Rollins On The Investment, Education And Technology That Can Strengthen Hotels And The Places They Serve

A hotel’s sustainability commitment is tested in everyday decisions: whether a towel marked for reuse stays on its rail, whether an empty ballroom consumes unnecessary energy and whether an owner invests in a property’s future. These decisions connect environmental responsibility with the discipline of running a good hotel. They also reveal where leadership matters most: helping people turn a shared ambition into reliable practice.

In The Future of Sustainable Hospitality, a September 2026 Climate & Sustainability Leadership Forum conversation hosted by FINN Partners and 1BusinessWorld, Dimitris Manikis, President, Europe, Middle East, Eurasia and Africa at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, joins Jason Rollins, Partner at FINN Partners, to explore that work. Their conversation moves from owner investment and staff education to technology and regional development, making a practical case for progress that fits each property and lasts beyond a single initiative.

Sustainability Stays At The Center Of The Business

Manikis begins with a concern familiar to anyone following the industry’s conference agenda. As artificial intelligence attracted more attention, he wondered whether sustainability was losing its place in the conversation. His conclusion is more encouraging. Technology is giving the industry new ways to address the same underlying challenges.

Reducing food waste, managing energy and improving the use of a building’s space all connect environmental responsibility with operating decisions. In Manikis’s view, AI and other technologies can make those decisions more informed and help owners act on ambitions that once seemed harder to deliver.

He also sees growing expectations among younger guests, owners and operators, alongside communities and investors. Sustainability therefore belongs in the same management conversations as service quality, staffing and investment, with attention to what each decision means for the hotel’s customers and future.

Build A Business Case That Can Last

The conversation is candid about the difficulty of changing a hotel. Manikis points to historic European properties that may be 150 or 200 years old, where owners face structural limits and restrictions on what can be altered. A new building and a protected older property begin with very different possibilities.

His description of sustainability as a marathon reflects those constraints. The right sequence of improvements depends on the asset. Owners need capable advisers, useful tools and a clear view of what can realistically change.

At the same time, he argues that waiting carries its own business risk. Guest expectations evolve, competitors improve and investors reassess what makes a property attractive. In his account, sustainability investment helps an owner remain relevant over the long term, even when a particular decision is difficult to justify through immediate returns alone.

Manikis also raises the question of whether guests will pay more for a sustainable hotel. He offers no guaranteed premium. His emphasis is on evolving customer expectations and the responsibility to explain what a hotel is doing. For owners, the case for investment extends beyond today’s room rate to the property’s long-term appeal.

Give Owners A Reason To Believe

A franchise network depends on the decisions of many individual owners. Manikis recalls the difficulty of discussing new investment with franchisees emerging from the pandemic, when resources were strained and survival had already demanded enormous effort.

He describes Wyndham Green as an expression of the company’s approach to sustainable hospitality and a means of engaging those owners. He also says Wyndham was reviewing certification approaches and adapting its work with franchisees as European requirements concerning environmental claims evolved. For a brand, supporting owners also means keeping its approach to certification up to date.

The most memorable example is personal. Manikis recalls presenting a Ramada owner in Lucknow, India, with what was then the highest level of Wyndham Green certification. When he asked what had motivated the investment, the owner spoke about his children and the hotel he wanted to leave them.

“I did it for my kids,” Manikis recalls the owner saying.

The story gives investment a longer horizon: a property’s place in a family and community. It also suggests a better starting point for brands seeking participation. Understand why an owner cares about the hotel’s future, then help that owner act on it.

Make Education Part Of Daily Operations

Manikis identifies education as essential to putting sustainability into practice. His example is deliberately ordinary: a guest follows a bathroom sign and hangs up a towel for reuse, only to find that it has been replaced that evening.

The sign communicates an intention. The housekeeping routine determines whether that intention is fulfilled. For Manikis, the gap demonstrates why training must reach everyone involved in delivering the guest experience.

He describes repeated education through webinars, conferences, newsletters and reminders in staff areas. Leadership teams, housekeepers and restaurant staff all need to understand the reasons behind a practice and their part in carrying it out. Rollins adds that staff turnover makes this an ongoing responsibility.

General managers have a particularly important role. They understand the property, lead its teams and influence the message that reaches guests and suppliers. When a general manager believes in the work, Manikis argues, that conviction can travel through the wider network around the hotel.

Manikis also recommends recognizing staff for good practice and inviting local communities to see how a hotel manages water and electricity. These steps make progress visible to the people delivering it and the neighbors it affects.

Put Technology To Work For People

Rollins asks a useful question about the growing range of hotel technologies: which tools deliver meaningful value, and which add complexity? Manikis acknowledges that technology can discourage investment when it feels expensive or difficult to adopt. His optimism comes from the wider availability of hardware, software and design ideas that operators can put to practical use.

He points to lighting controls, air-conditioning management, food waste and the use of meeting rooms, ballrooms and other large spaces. Each gives owners a concrete question to ask of a tool: will it help this property use its resources more effectively?

The conversation also connects technology with the human experience of hospitality. Manikis describes the possibility of freeing front-desk staff from repetitive data entry so they can make eye contact, offer a coffee or suggest a restaurant. In that vision, a better operating system gives employees more room to welcome a guest.

The leadership task is to make that purpose clear to staff and connect each investment to an operating need. A technology decision earns its place through the work it helps people do.

Adapt The Approach To The Property And The Market

Across EMEA, the starting points differ substantially. Manikis describes established European markets, India’s developing opportunities, new construction in parts of Central Asia, longer development horizons in Africa and ambitious projects in the Middle East.

He is particularly interested in the opportunity to incorporate technology and sustainability into a new building from the outset. An owner developing a hotel can make choices that are far harder to implement later in a historic property. In his account, those differences should shape the pace and form of implementation.

His assessment of individual regions is optimistic, but his management point is practical: a single approach cannot be deployed in the same way at the same time across every market. Brands need to understand local conditions, owners’ resources and the realities of a particular asset. Manikis pairs that flexibility with a clear commitment to non-negotiable fire, life and safety standards.

Lead Through The Decisions Within Reach

As the conversation closes, Manikis returns to listening. Guests, employees, investors and business partners provide signals about where the industry is going. Leaders have to hear those signals and translate them into decisions.

He acknowledges that external shocks can alter a business’s prospects even when its leaders make thoughtful choices. His closing advice is to focus energy on what they can influence: “control the controllables.”

For a hotel leader, that means supporting the general manager who makes training stick, finding where food or energy is wasted and helping an owner choose the next worthwhile investment. The scale of the ambition becomes manageable when responsibility is attached to a decision someone can make.

Hotels depend on the vitality of the places they serve. Improving operations, welcoming guests well and caring for those destinations can reinforce one another. Manikis’s optimism rests on the people and tools already available to the industry. The opportunity for leadership is to put them to work, property by property, with the patience to build for the long term and the resolve to act today.