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[00:00:00] Floris Licht: And there's always turnover in hotels, right? So, I, and I cross my heart, I know for sure that no housekeeper got fired because a hotel started planting trees.
[00:00:09] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:00:10] Floris Licht: Right?
[00:00:22] Matt Welle: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another Matt Talks Hospitality. And the topic I wanted to talk about today is housekeeping. Housekeeping has been a thing that I've experienced almost every week when I stay in a hotel, and I think, do I really need my room to be cleaned and my sheets to be changed and my towels to be changed? And a person who is, I think, very aligned with me on this particular topic is Floris. Floris is joining me. He's a hotel general manager for a large hotel here in the Netherlands, but at the same time, he's the founder of Hotels For Trees. And he's approached that challenge of having to clean a room every single night with a solution that's also good for the planet. Floris, thank you for joining.
[00:00:57] Floris Licht: Thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.
[00:01:00] Matt Welle: So, I very quickly described what the idea was. Can you maybe explain better what the idea around Hotels For Trees is?
[00:01:07] Floris Licht: Yeah. It's actually as easy as you just explained.
[00:01:09] Matt Welle: Oh, great!
[00:01:11] Floris Licht: No. I mean, we have 250 hotel partners across the globe, about 40 different countries, and they all offer their guests the opportunity to skip the stay-over cleaning, as we call it, so the in-between cleaning. So, this only works if people stay for more than one night, of course. And then, the hotel donates money, and with that, a certified tree is planted on their behalf, and that's it.
[00:01:32] Matt Welle: What does that mean, certified tree?
[00:01:34] Floris Licht: Well, you know, you can buy trees for a dollar online, and then, hopefully, somebody will chuck some seeds out of an aeroplane or use a drone, you know, to plant something somewhere, but yeah, you might end up buying a tree that's also sold to three other people. So, we really work with certified planters in the Netherlands. Or in Europe, we work with Trees for All, which is actually the biggest tree planting foundation in the Netherlands. They've been around for 20 years. So, we really label the trees and actually have a notary who oversees this entire project. And we only work on projects that we fully fund. So, 100% our projects is with Trees For All, so that you don't run the risk that trees end up getting sold to multiple parties. And we only invest in, yeah, in tree planting projects where the land is owned for the next 25 to 30 years. Because planting trees is very easy. Growing trees is a different thing, right? So, we grow trees, actually.
[00:02:29] Matt Welle: So, like, it's not a one seed that you get for skipping of the house, it's an actual tree.
[00:02:34] Floris Licht: Yeah. We plant trees. Yeah. Yeah. And we do that. We physically plant those trees ourselves as well. So we'll also…
[00:02:38] Matt Welle: I've seen the photos. Yeah. Yeah. I've yet to make it there. I will come one day.
[00:02:42] Floris Licht: Exactly. We've had some users join us on the tree planting day, but we actually plant, yeah, small trees between 50 centimeters and a meter. Also, with respect for the biodiversity in the area, so no monocultures. And, yeah, we organize tree planting days where then, you know, our partners, our hotel partners, hotel colleagues, general managers come and join us.
[00:03:03] Matt Welle: And it seems so simple, but then not many hotels are doing it around the world. There's, you know, thousands and thousands of hotels. So, what are the economics of it? Like, how does it work financially for a hotel?
[00:03:15] Floris Licht: Yeah. The economics depend, of course, a bit on where the hotel is located and what the cost of labor is. But if you look at, you know, a country like the Netherlands, where we are now, cleaning a room typically costs, you know, €10, €11, €12. Many hotels use outsourced labor agencies, and a tree costs €5. And because Hotels For Trees is a certified nonprofit organization, ANBI, they call it in Dutch, those donations are tax-deductible. So, then the net cost becomes about €3.70. So hotels save $11.12 euros, often struggle getting sufficient housekeeping employees in, right? So, the labor market is very tight in the Netherlands, and they save €3.80. So, there's a benefit in the P&L of the hotel as well, and that's the win-win-win, we always say, because, you know, guests like it, the teams typically like it because it relieves a bit of the work pressure on the housekeeping department who are quite often, you know, bit overwhelmed by all that's going on in hotels nowadays. Employees like it. Bookers like it. Event planners like it. And the planet gains, you know, between 500,000 trees every day at the moment.
[00:04:28] Matt Welle: So, how many trees have you planted to date?
[00:04:29] Floris Licht: We're approaching 800,000.
[00:04:31] Matt Welle: That's exciting.
[00:04:33] Floris Licht: We are hoping to hit a million next year.
[00:04:34] Matt Welle: Does that make a forest? Or how many trees are in a forest?
[00:04:36] Floris Licht: Well, about 2,000 trees is about one square kilometer.
[00:04:40] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:04:41] Floris Licht: And so, yeah, it's a forest.
[00:04:42] Matt Welle: It’s a big forest.
[00:04:44] Floris Licht: Yeah. Yeah. It's a big forest. Yeah. And we've supported over 40 projects across the globe. We always try to source projects in the areas where our hotel partners are located. Which then also offers us the opportunity to organize these tree planting days. So, we've had those in Belgium. We've had those in the Netherlands. We're now working on two tree planting days in Germany. We've looked at Portugal and Spain, so there's something cooking there as well, which, yeah, makes it extra nice for those hotels because they can actually physically, you know, put the trees into the ground.
[00:05:17] Matt Welle: And so you have a day job.
[00:05:19] Floris Licht: Yes.
[00:05:20] Matt Welle: You run a big, big hotel here in Amsterdam. So, how do you combine this, and then where did this idea start from? Like, why do you wanna make your life so hard by having two jobs?
[00:05:28] Floris Licht: Yeah. It's a good question. I ask myself the question every now and then as well. No. I mean, the main person running the Hotels For Trees organization is Linda Borcher. So, she's my partner in crime as of the first day that we launched Hotels For Trees. She's what we call the Chief Tree Planting Officer.
[00:05:46] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:05:47] Floris Licht: CTPO. This all started some three and a half years ago. I was allowed in my previous job. I was the general manager at the Novotel at the airport, and my owner allowed me to do an executive MBA at Nyenrode University. And during that course, or during that program, I had a course on sustainability management with a very inspiring professor called André Nijhoff, and that really opened my eyes. Well, together with, you know, us going on four trips abroad and me seeing a bit more of, you know, the shape the world is in and the struggles that we face, we went to Beijing. We went to Cape Town. We went to Montevideo, to Silicon Valley. And, yeah, strangely enough, I started this executive MBA, and I thought, oh, if I come out of that, you know, I'm gonna be CEO of the world. And I actually ended up coming out of it a lot more holistic, you know, than I was ever expecting. So, I started thinking about, okay, how can I make an impact? And I've always been passionate about sustainability. My former hotel, Novotel Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, was very sustainable as well. Not only build sustainable, but also run sustainable. And I really wanted to, you know, impact the industry, so to say. And for this course, sustainability management, I once wrote a paper on Hotels For Trees, which got me a nice grade. It ended up on the pile. And then, yeah, funnily enough, because, of course, the COVID period was very tough on all of us, especially in the hotel industry, but that actually gave me the time to, you know, think about, oh, you know, my excuse was always I'm not gonna execute Hotels For Trees because I already have a day job and a family, and I wanna do sports, etcetera. But then all of a sudden, during COVID, I had, you know, tons of time to spend with my family and loved ones, which was nice. But then I also thought, okay, you know, you always had this excuse of not doing it. That excuse is now gone, so you know, go for it.
[00:07:37] Matt Welle: Really good.
[00:07:38] Floris Licht: So, that really, yeah, that really triggered it. And we started in 2021 with 10 hotels back then in the Netherlands only. And, yeah, we're now represented in over 40 countries, 250 plus hotels, one county.
[00:07:53] Matt Welle: What's your goal? What's the thing you hope to achieve with it? Is there an end goal to this, or is it an internal journey that you're on?
[00:07:59] Floris Licht: Well, we're aiming for a million trees per year. That's like our b hack. But, you know, in a perfect world, it would be even nicer if Hotels For Trees were not needed at all because this becomes, like, the norm. You know? That would be cool. But we're not there yet. I think we're moving in the right direction in some parts of the world. If you look at Scandinavia, for instance, it's very difficult for us to get started because many of the hotels there already have, you know, optional cleaning. So, they've already, like, flipped the system because they're a lot more eco-conscious in general. And in the Netherlands, we're moving in the right direction. We have some good movement in Germany and France. But in other parts of the world, it's extremely challenging, actually, because people from a cultural point of view, they're just not into sustainability as much as we are in parts of the Western world, so to say.
[00:08:45] Matt Welle: So, I stay in hotels every single week. And most of the time, there's a little card in my bathroom that says, “If you, you know, wanna protect the environment, then drop your towels on the floor. And then we'll get, you know, we'll change your towels.” And I always think that is not gonna actually save the planet, but what do you say to those hoteliers to convince them that Hotels For Trees is actually a better solution?
[00:09:07] Floris Licht: Yeah. I mean, those cards, I think, have been in hotels for the past 40 years, and some then say ‘save the planet’ or ‘be green’ or whatever. And the question is indeed, you know, how much the impact is of, you know, putting the tiles on the ground. I mean, the way we sell this to the general manager depends a bit on the general manager, and if they are intrinsically motivated, you know, to do the right thing for the planet and the future of the planet or if it's more of a money game. So, it depends a bit. You know, we test the waters because there is also this financial benefit. And in the hotel that I run, we've actually done some A/B testing. So, we've had a period where we said to guests, “Okay, if you don't have the room cleaned, we'll give you a drink voucher.”
[00:09:49] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:09:50] Floris Licht: We did that for two months, and then we had another period of two months where we said, “If you don't have the room cleaned, we'll plant a tree.” And then the trees won, so to say.
[00:09:59] Matt Welle: By a law? Or…
[00:10:00] Floris Licht: No. It was a close call, but they won.
[00:10:01] Matt Welle: Okay. People like a drink. Exactly.
[00:10:04] Floris Licht: Yeah. But that also depends a bit, of course, on your business mix. You know? If you have a lot of leisure guests, they might go for the drink more than single traveling corporates, you know, who want to have a beer in a bar on their own, you know? It might be a bit sad. Unless you have, like, a communal table, then it becomes a different story. But then the trees won, and yeah, and then that's how the concept also, you know, entered my hotel after I'd already been a gym there for quite a bit, but then it all started coming together.
[00:10:32] Matt Welle: Because how do you convince branded hotels? Branded hotels often have many rules about what's allowed and what's not allowed. Do you struggle with getting into branded hotels versus independent hotels?
[00:10:42] Floris Licht: Yes. Yeah. It's more difficult. So, we have some, our key, or our perfect clients, so to say, is either an independent hotel or a small chain or a branded hotel that is on the franchise side and then takes a bit more freedom into, you know, how they live by the, yeah, the rules of the brand, so to say. But we have some corporate-branded hotels as well. Every now and then, you come across brands where in the brand standards, it says that you're not allowed to incentivize people to skip the clean for reasons of security, for reasons of, you know, the quality of the room going backwards. If somebody plants a tree for four days in a row, you know, you have all the, you know, stuff going on in rooms, so.
[00:11:29] Matt Welle: Too many trees in the world. I can't handle the trees.
[00:11:32] Floris Licht: Exactly. So, yeah, that sometimes becomes a challenge. Yeah.
[00:11:36] Matt Welle: Yeah. So, what does the data show? Like, one in how many guests will skip cleaning of the room, and what's the impact that it has on the bottom line of a hotel?
[00:11:45] Floris Licht: That very much depends on two things. One is, how intrinsically motivated is the leadership of the hotel when it comes to making this work?
[00:11:55] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:11:56] Floris Licht: And how do they engage the team, and how do they get the team on board? How excited is the team about this whole concept? And the second thing is, how is it embedded or not embedded into the entire guest journey? So, if you have a hotel that fully embeds it into the whole guest journey, and for instance, a hotel that works with Mews, and people see this. Maybe they get a pre-arrival, you know, upsell email from Oaky saying, “Oh, you know, book a bike trip, get your bottle of champagne. No. Skip the clean.” And then they get the online check-in message from Mews, where they can already skip the clean, you know, they can already indicate don't clean my room, skip the clean. Then they come into the hotel. There's a screen there saying our guests have planted 500 trees last month. There's maybe a little tree on the desk with one of the door hangers. The receptionist has the time and takes the effort to explain the concept. You know, that's where you see hotels with up to 40% uptake. And with 40%, I mean, 40% of all stay-over guests, right?
[00:12:55] Matt Welle: Wow. Yeah. Not every guest has stayed in for more than one night.
[00:12:57] Floris Licht: Exactly. Exactly. And we track that on the website as well. So, if you go on the website, you can actually see our top-performing hotels.
[00:13:04] Matt Welle: Who is the number one?
[00:13:05] Floris Licht: Well, it typically tends to be, like, smaller, like, boutique hotels where the owner is very passionate about…
[00:13:11] Matt Welle: This whole culture built around it.
[00:13:13] Floris Licht: So, we have, for instance, I think they might still be number one now. I should have looked at it this morning. Sorry. So, no. But there's, like, a hotel, Oasi Hotel in Italy, and the general manager there is also a strong advocate of sustainability. She actually also co-organizes a big conference in Italy, where she also pushes this topic. And she has really, you know, embraced our concept and is also sort of an ambassador in the Italian market. And they have actually developed their own wooden engraved door hangers, which is, you know, a bit more fashionable than maybe the, you know, recycled plastic or the paper you see in other places, so then it really becomes part of, you know, the boutique experience as well, and they are doing very, very well.
[00:13:58] Matt Welle: Nice. Yeah. Because you started an issue with the door hanger. So, normally, you have these door hangers in the room that say, “Oh, clean my room or don't disturb.”
[00:14:03] Floris Licht: Yeah.
[00:14:04] Matt Welle: And you added the door hanger to that, “which is the skip my cleaning and donate a tree.”
[00:14:08] Floris Licht: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Matt Welle: That's where you started more of an analog approach, which I think is critical because not everyone's always online. And then with Mews, we started saying, well, there's also the digital guest journey that we have. Do you see, you know, we've injected it with, for example, the booking or the journey online check-in or through a partner like Oaky. Do you see that the digital and analog experience combined has a bigger effect? Are those hotels thriving more with this initiative?
[00:14:33] Floris Licht: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So, if a hotel doesn't have Mews or, like, a more legacy PMS where they can't really embed this in the guest journey, then they only have the door hanger. If hotels say, “Oh, we don't want anything in the rooms, we just use Mews.” That's also, of course, an option. So, you have the online option and the analog option. But it's when those two are used, you know, combined, that's where we see the biggest impact. And that whole, you know, us becoming more part of the whole ecosystem of hotels, that has really shifted when we launched the second version of our platform, which actually became an API. So initially, we were just a WordPress website, you know, that my good friend, Casper van Diemen from Continews, offered to us. He did the PR for us initially. He gave that to us for free because he liked the concept, but we had this WordPress site, which was like an Opel that we started putting a spoiler on, and new rims and a new, so we started pimping the Opel, but in fact, you know, we maybe needed an Audi. So, at the start of this year, we actually invested quite a substantial amount of money, and our, yeah, we now have an API, and the API now can connect with, you know, anything and everything that, you know, makes a hotel's IT infrastructure. So, it can be a housekeeping app. It can be another PMS. It can be a WhatsApp engine, right? The likes of Runner AI. You know, you could link with Runner AI as well, so that you're in the bar in the evening. It will say, “Matt, you know, another beautiful day tomorrow. Would you like us to clean your room or plant a tree?” And then you say, “Oh, give me a tree.” And then, boom, it goes into Mews, and then housekeeping knows, front office knows. The guest, maybe, gets an email confirming that the tree is planted on their behalf.
[00:16:17] Matt Welle: Right.
[00:16:18] Floris Licht: So, we really want to become part of the entire guest journey and that entire IT ecosystem that runs hotels, basically. And with the API, we now can. Which is really cool.
[00:16:27] Matt Welle: And do you see that housekeepers have embraced it? On the one side, you know, you might replace some labor, so that's their job. Do you see that, you know, that culture building with housekeeping that they actually love it, and it's not just creating another task for them to do?
[00:16:42] Floris Licht: Yeah. I mean, in many hotels, housekeepers have some type of, you know, app or tool in which they do the admin on their cleaning activities. And 9 out of 10 times, it's just a question of adding another button, right? They have a button saying DND. So, I did not clean this room because the guest had DND, and now there's another button with a tree on it, right? So for them, that's the only difference. And the impact depends a bit on if the housekeeping department is, like, fully insourced or outsourced. If you're using partial outsourcing, of course, then you can reduce, you know, this part of your labor, which makes the savings even more substantial, of course. And there's always turnover in hotels, right? So, I mean, cross my heart, I know for sure that no housekeeper got fired because a hotel started planting trees.
[00:17:30] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:17:31] Floris Licht: Right? Because you slowly start working on it and then, you know, 10 trees a day, 20 trees a day. But that, yeah, that labor you can then also, or that time you can also use to increase quality, or train people, or, you know, whatnot. So, yeah, we actually get very positive feedback from the housekeeping teams as well.
[00:17:51] Matt Welle: So good. So, what does the future look like? What's your plan for next year?
[00:17:55] Floris Licht: Yeah. Well, recently, we hired a really talented market manager for the German market, Camilla. And actually, yesterday, a press release went out in the German market, De Hoga. De Hoga is, I think, the industry association. And I was like, whoa, that's a good start. Right? Announcing, you know, her arrival, saying, oh, Hotels for Trees. We've always been around in Germany, but I think so far we have just below 20 hotels, which is not very impressive considering the size of the German market. But Camilla is an absolute superstar, so she's now. She used to be like an ESG lead at a big consultancy firm, but also wanted to, you know, have something with a bit more purpose and impact. And she felt that, you know, was a perfect match. And we agree, so we're very happy to have her on board. So, we're hoping to, yeah, grow in the German market. We've already had our colleagues in Australia, New Zealand, America, and Canada. So, two fellow Dutchies who live on opposite sides of the globe. So, actually, in two weeks, we have another team call, and then one of them needs to wake up at, like, six in the morning, and the other one is about to go to bed. We make it work, but they have their own, like, chapters. So, we have separated the globe into three parts. And Linda and myself, Camilla and Anna, who also work for us. We're basically focusing on Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But we see a great opportunity when it comes to hiring native speaking market managers to really develop countries because you need to become part of the whole…
[00:19:30] Matt Welle: The local community.
[00:19:31] Floris Licht: Yeah. The local community. But it's, you know, industry media. It's talking at schools. It's going to conferences. It's sitting on podcasts with Matt. You know? But it's stuff like that, really, then, you become, like, an entity, and people start trusting you. Because hotel hoteliers, they tend to, you know, have their own mind. So, for us to do cold calling or approach people via LinkedIn and say, “Oh, do you like us wanna apply?” It doesn't really work.
[00:19:55] Matt Welle: Yeah.
[00:19:56] Floris Licht: They need to, you know, see an article and then hear a podcast and then see a presentation at a hospitality event, a booth at a conference, and then maybe after three, four, five times, they're like, this might be something. And then, so that's how we start. And that has really worked in the Netherlands, and we now need to apply that same strategy in a country like Germany. And then we'll go to France, and then we'll go to Belgium. Yeah. We have a good colleague in Belgium and France as well. So, yeah, there's enough opportunity there.
[00:20:28] Matt Welle: Nice. So, if someone's listening and still doubting. Like, what would you say? Like, how would you convince them that actually, right now is the moment to go to your website and actually just sign up and get going?
[00:20:40] Floris Licht: Yeah. I mean, I find it difficult to answer because I don't understand what's not to like.
[00:20:45] Matt Welle: Why would you not do it?
[00:20:46] Floris Licht: Why would you not do it? Right? And especially when auto agents say, “Oh, but we have a system whereby we offer people 1,000 loyalty points or whereby we offer people a free coffee in the bar,” you know, that doesn't really work. Actually, yesterday, there was a banker from ING. They did research, and he was a sector leisure specialist. And they did research, and they had concluded then, you know, offering people a free drink to skip the clean doesn't work. Well, I think we're proving that, you know, planting a tree and skipping the clean does work, right? So, if it improves the bottom line, if it reduces workload in housekeeping, if your employees love it, your communities love it, municipalities love it, in meeting and event, bookers love it. If you look at the conversion that we have in our hotel, linked to us being, you know, front runner when it comes to sustainability, it's hard to quantify, right? A big event booker would never say to you, oh, we signed with you because you're planting trees and filtering bottled water and stuff like that. They will never say that, but they are asking us these questions. You know? And recently, the hotel was awarded Green Key Gold, and that helps. It helps conversion. It helps your branding. It helps your engagement, you know, especially the younger generations coming into the workforce. They increasingly want to work for hotels that show a bit more purpose in the way they go about their business. So, if you then really make this a part of your culture and the way you operate your business, not only build a hotel, right? The building side is more owners and CapEx, but how you run the hotel, if you do that in a more sustainable way, it will help your recruitment. It will lower your turnover. It will lower your sick leave. But it's hard to quantify, but we are experiencing that in our hotel, that it's really making an impact.
[00:22:32] Matt Welle: And we've been working together for a few years, and you're always very thankful to me for becoming a partner. But, actually, I'm very thankful to you. The thing you're doing is really special, and you could just get on with your job and then go home and have the easy life, but you chose the hard route to do the right thing for the planet. And I just wanna say thank you on behalf of all of our people, who love our planet. I think it's actually really special for someone to just go out of their way to do something good for the world and actually have an impact on our industry as well. And then you've combined somehow your passion for hotels with your passion for the world. And, like, it seemed like such a simple idea, but then no one had done it. So, I'm like, yeah, it seems simple, but the execution is still hard. And I'm sure that you work more hours than your contract states in life, but thank you for everything you're doing. It's really powerful.
[00:23:17] Floris Licht: Thank you. Yeah. It really means a lot to me, hearing this from you, especially. So, thanks, Matt.
[00:23:21] Matt Welle: Nice.
[00:23:22] Floris Licht: Nice.
[00:23:22] Matt Welle: And thank you for joining today.
[00:23:23] Floris Licht: Thank you.
