Sustainable Forestry

1. As a response to the quickly depleting forest resources in the United Kingdom, Marriott
Hotels & Resorts, with their branch in London, has adopted an initiative to promote sustainable
forestry through their facilities and services. With the help of advertising, public relations, word-
of-mouth and social media marketing, Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), being a corporation
that serves as the information and solutions resource for the whole project, aims to promote
Marriott’s involvement in this shift towards a more environment-friendly chain of hotels. Part of
SFI’s strategy for Marriott would be to build partnerships with airline companies who would
likewise be interested in decreasing their ecological footprint. By doing so, Marriott would not
only be given a loyal set of clients, but also credibility for their other regular customers and, of
course, a good environmental image.

Abstract
Vivian Espinosa [email protected]
Therese Yvan Larroza [email protected]
Emeline Legay [email protected]
Marie Sophie Patois [email protected]
Fleur Pichat [email protected]
Anna Marieta Rellama [email protected]

2. FALL 2011
Save the Date!
Environmental Marketing
Sustainable Forestry
An Initiative to promote Marriott Hotel’s Eco-friendliness!
IESEG
This paper was prepared by

Espinsosa, Vivian
Larroza, Therese Yvan
Legay, Emeline
Patois, Marie Sophie
Pichat, Fleur
Rellama, Anna Marieta

Sustainable Forestry Initiative

in partnership with

Marriott Hotels
Hotel Engineering Association
The Local Government of London

Under the guidance of

David Fitzgerald
Professor, Environmental Marketing
IESEG School of Management
What is a Sustainable Forest?
A sustainable forest is a forest that is carefully
managed so that as trees are felled they are replaced with
seedlings that eventually grow into mature trees. This is a
carefully and skilfully managed system. The forest is a
working environment, producing wood products such as
wood pulp for the paper / card industry and wood based
materials for furniture manufacture and the construction
industry. Great care is taken to ensure the safety of
wildlife and to preserve the natural environment.
Source: Ryan, V. What is a Sustainable Forest. 2007.
<http://www.technologystudent.com/prddes1/susenv1.html>
Fun Run 2012
07/01/2012 Tree-planting Activity
04/02/2012
Help sustain our forests by
planting your own tree! Get a
chance to label your tree as well!
Join us in one of our 3k, 5k,
10k or triathlon races! Prices
to be given away!

3. 3
FALL 2011 ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETING
Sustainable Forestry
1
The destruction of our forests has become an
issue that is nowadays causing struggles. It is
important to look out for it because of three reasons:
ones is our responsibility towards biodiversity;
second is for resource saving and lastly, for the
overall environmental health and human survival.
If these motives are well thought of and
considered, an environmental, economic and
social well-being can be attained, thus reducing the
effects of climate change.
Europe has a lot of forest areas which need
care. Pictured below are the percentages of
woodland in each European country. It can be
observed that Finland and Sweden are the
countries with more green areas, occupying more
than half of the territory, while other countries,
such as Portugal, Spain, Norway, Germany, Italy,
Poland and France are all in a similar percentage
between 25 and 40 percent of green areas. The United
Kingdom, however, is the country with the least
woodland area beneath all, with only 13 percent of its
overall territory occupied by forests.
2
In line with this, the UK
has expressed great concern for
their woodlands. Just to give
you a picture of how it is, the
forest area in the UK as of 31
March 2011 is of 3.1 million
hectares (forestry.gov.uk).
Recently, the UK has
created and implemented
policies to promote sustainable
forestry in the country. Some of these policies include taking action like:
!Doing international efforts to combat illegal logging;
!Creating government requirements to source timber products from legal and sustainable sources;
!Planning forest restoration programs;
!Asking for certification of forest management and delivery of certified wood to marketplaces;
!Encouraging development by the UK forest industries of a sustainability strategy;

In line with all these, we have decided to focus our project on sustainable forestry efforts in the UK.

4. 4
FALL 2011 ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETING
Why sustainable forestry?
Why Marriott Hotel?
1
According to the World Tourism
Organization, “ecotourism is the fastest
growing market in the tourism industry,
growing at a rate of 5% worldwide and
representing over 11% of all consumer
spending”. This new trend, as they say, is
representative of the world evolution. It is really
important for our campaign, therefore, to follow
this trend and to use it to make people aware
about sustainable forestry.
Moreover, we can see that “more than
46 percent of the companies in the hotel
industry collaborate with suppliers, customers
to achieve sustainable objectives,” thus the hotel
segmentation is the right segment to our
campaign. Indeed, hotels have the desire to be
eco-friendly and want to make financial effort to
achieve this goal. “Some 66 percent of industry
players are looking to increase their post-
recession sustainability budgets over
the next 12 months, with only 5
percent looking to decrease them.”

Why Marriott hotel?

Marriott Hotels is an
internationally-known chain of
hotels. It welcomes a lot of business
travelers and it currently has a lot of
partnerships with flight companies
all around the world like Air France,
Air China, Singapore Airlines, Air
2
Canada, etc. The reputation of this hotel is great
for our campaign and permits us to make a lot
of people aware of our causes. Furthermore, we
want to have an impact on the airline crew
because they will be the ones to convey our
sustainable goals to many people all around the
world—that is, a global word-of-mouth.
Moreover, Marriott aims to be more eco-
friendly with their new objectives for this year.
According to Marriott’s website, their strategy
for contributing to environmental conservation
for this year is as follows: “With an increase in
global travel comes corporate responsibility for
mitigating our business impact on the natural
environment. Both in our hotels and beyond,
we seek to understand and act on the direct and
indirect environmental impacts of our business
operations.”
Their main objectives are:


Reduce
energy and
water
consumption
by 25 percent
per available
room
Create green
construction
standards for
hotel
developers
Invest in
innovative
conservation
initiatives
including
rainforest
protection
Educate
associates
and gests to
support the
environment

5. 5
FALL 2011 ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETING
Why Marriott Hotel?
Location
We may have mentioned before that our target
would be the United Kingdom, but seeing that this
scope is still too big, we have decided to target the
Marriott at the center of London. Indeed, according to
the non-profit international Ecotourism society “more
than two-thirds of U.S. and Australian travelers, and
90% of British tourists, consider active protection of
the environment and support of local communities to
be part of a hotel’s responsibility”. British tourists are
really sensible when it comes to sustainability, thus,
Our Indirect Targets
Targeting Marriott hotel permits us to target indirectly airline companies because of its several
partnerships. This is vital especially since we want to have an impact on bigger companies like Air
Canada, Air France, Singapore Airlines so they can reach to more people as well. This is directly
linked with the fact that we want to also target the flight attendants who stayed or will be staying in
Marriott hotel. If we achieve in making them aware of our causes, they will convey our values as well,
thereby ending up as parts of this environmental movement too. It is also a great way for companies
to be eco-friendly especially for airlines as their environmental footprint is relatively high.
The following are our variables for the flight attendants market:
Marriott
• Air Canada
• Air France
• Singapore Airlines
Airline
companies • Pilots
• Air hostess
Flight
attendants
Demographic
22- retirement
male and female
air hostess
pilots

Geographic

UK- London
Short and long flights
to and from London
Psychographic
Dynamic people
actors of change
nomadic lifestyle
Behavioral
frequent stay in
Marriott hotel
loyal to Marriott hotel
not price sensitive
we think that it would be beneficial to our campaign.

6. 6
FALL 2011 ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETING
The Stakeholder Network:
who takes care of which?

2
welfare and image of the country that they are
in. Because of their power over most people,
their main contribution would be to give
credibility to our initiative. That is, if they
support it.
The second group of stakeholders, more
commonly known as the lead users, plays a vital
role in the initiative, as they are the ones who’d
be keeping the fire burning. They are the ones
responsible for the spread of word-of-mouth,
and they eventually become the determinants of
the overall success of the campaign. What
motivates this group, as opposed to the opinion
leaders, ranges from personal reasons such as
money and personal missions to company
goals. Included in this group are the
community, Marriott Hotels, the Hotel
Engineering Association (HEA), the airline
companies and the crew that comes with it.
Last but not the least is the network
facilitator, that is, the group that regulates the
progress of the whole initiative, the one who
protects the idea and makes sure that it does not
fall into the wrong hands, the group that, as the
name suggests, facilitates the undertaking of the
whole initiative. For this study, we have
decided to put just one group under this
category, our company, Sustainable Forestry
Initiative, to be specific, for the reasons
mentioned above.

1
For the purpose of this study, the group has
identified an exhaustive list of potential
stakeholders and from such list were driven the
eight most important ones that would hopefully
cover all the dimensions of the study. These are:
•Sustainable Forestry Initiative or SFI
(the company that we are representing);
•The local government of London,
England;
•The tourist authorities;
•The forest authorities;
•Marriott Hotels;
•The Airline companies;
•The Hotel Engineering Association; and
•The community.
These were further divided into three, each
being identified as an opinion leader, a lead user
or a network facilitator.
Opinion leaders, as the name suggests, are
those who have a strong say on what happens in
a certain area or not. They are the influencers—
the first-movers. If one needs an idea spread
out, therefore, it is best if you let it through
these groups as doing this will most likely yield
you with the most optimized results.
Stakeholders belonging to this group include the
government and the tourism authorities.
As it can be observed, what mainly
motivates these opinion leaders is the overall
Group Role Motivation Network Contribution
•Government
•Tourism Authorities
•Forest Authorities
Opinion leaders •Promotion of sustainable
forestry ethics in the
community.
•Better country statistics
•Lighter ecological footprint
•Establishes credibility.
•Regulates.
•Sets the restrictions.

•Community
•Marriott Hotels
•Hotel Engineering
Association
•Airline companies
Lead users •High credibility of their
information sources.
•To save the environment.
•To save money
•Decision-makers
•Fire-starters
•Word-of-mouth

•Sustainable Forestry
Initiative
Network facilitator
Information and
solutions resource
•Promotion of sustainable
forestry ethics in the
community.
•The know-how.
•Initiator.
•Facilitator.
•Makes it all possible.

7. 7
FALL 2011 ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETING
Marketing Plan
Marketing Objectives
1
In order to be able to provide a marketing plan
that will be well adapted to the situation, we need to
know some information about Marriott, particularly
its reputation.
On average, the websites that offer the
customers to give a grade to Marriott hotels
display a grade of four points on five—a relatively
good grade thanks its service quality and
facilities. Firstly, customers are satisfied by the
cleanliness of the hotels. Being one of the main
points that determine if customers are willing to
stay or come back again, it has a huge impact on
any hotel’s reputation. Customers are also
satisfied when it comes to the accommodation
facilities and the high level of service that
Marriott offers. Among these services are
restaurants, swimming pools, activities for
children, beauty shops, the housekeeping service,
the limousine service and some other different
services, all promoting relaxation, thus making
the customers’ journey easier. Customers also
appreciate Marriott’s locations as it is each time
well adapted to the place where the hotel is
settled. If it is in a big town, Marriott would be
located in the center of the town. If it is on the
seacoast, the Marriott hotel would directly be on
the beach, just to provide examples. Finally,
customers grade the company considering a last
but not the least important aspect: the price. In
general, customers are willing to pay more to
obtain a high quality of services and quality of
life. That is the case for Marriott hotels; the price
has been well-adapted to their positioning and
people don’t mind about that.
As it can be observed, Marriott seems well
appreciated for some reasons but none about the
eco-friendly measures it recently took.
We want people to know the company
took some measures that are respectful towards
the environment. Marriott has reconsidered its
water management in order to reduce the
quantity used and to recycle it if possible. As for
the waste, it has reconsidered its waste
management and settled a new system to sort
2
waste and reduce the quantity of waste produced
each year. Marriott aims at conserving the energy
in terms of heating and light with new systems
and materials that helps to reach this goal like
energy-saving light-bulbs and re-evaluated
automatic time switches. The new way of
purchasing also needs highlighting: Marriott
tends to buy biological and local food and to use
new eco-friendly cleaning products. Moreover,
the living environment on the whole has been
changed into something more profitable for
environmental sustainability. The furniture, the
decoration items, the towels and the soap are
some objects that are now recyclable or come
from firms that respect the rules of producing in
an environment-friendly way, for example.
Because of the link between Marriott and
Sustainable Forestry Initiative, we intend to focus on
some measures that concern sustainable forestry
directly. The majority of furniture in Marriott hotels
now comes from sustainable forests, as do some items
like towels. The hotels are SFI accredited. This
accreditation is given by the SFI after a checking of
the different measures taken by some of its members
or partners. Having this accreditation allows Marriott
to put the logo of SFI in its hotels to show customers a
proof of its engagement for the sustainability of the
environment. Moreover, Marriott hotels follow the
guidelines settled by the EHS (Environment, Health
and Safety), that is, a set of guidelines which were
created by the International Finance Corporation. It
provides a list of the different measures to take to be
respectful towards the environment and to take care of
the safety and health in different situations as well.
Our goal is to make customers aware about
Marriott’s involvement with respect to the
environment. We hope that with this campaign, they
would be more interested in going to Marriott not just
because of its high quality service and facilities, but
also its friendliness towards the environment.

8. 8
FALL 2011 ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETING
Positioning
1
London Marriott Hotel is under the
management of Marriott® International, a
worldwide operator and franchisor of a broad
portfolio of hotels and related lodging facilities.
As a brand, it is growing globally, embracing
change and satisfying guests in 70 countries and
territories. The brand is currently known for its
luxury offerings, up to date hospitality-related
technology and warm hospitality.
With the green initiative, London
Marriot Hotel will be positioned as an
environmental-friendly hotel who allows their
guests which consists of companies, investors,
corporate owners, associates and private
consumers reduce their ecological footprint.

In the past few years, environmental
initiatives were trending in hospitality industry.
There were a lot of hotels ‘going green’ and
executing ‘sustainability’ campaigns. However,
as the recession happened, hospitality
marketing’s focus shifted from
emphasizing environmental awareness and
initiatives to emphasizing value.
However, a study by Cornell University
(2010) demonstrates that consumers didn’t
forget about environmental concerns during the
recession; in fact, they are increasingly willing
to pay a premium to patronize green restaurants
An environment friendly hotel
Help corporations and consumers reduce their
ecological footprint
Luxurious chain of hotels around the world
Global and open to
change
Warm hospitality and
new technologies
2
and purchase green products. In the study, it
was found that almost 90% of respondents said
they would pay more to eat at a green
restaurant, and one third said they would pay
up to 12% more. From a marketing
perspective, this means that ‘going green’ is a
viable and profitable differentiating factor.
According to the Cornell study,
consumers, particularly companies and
individuals having higher income, higher
education demographic, continue to be
concerned about the environmental impact of
their company’s and their own behavior
regardless of their reasons and motivations.
Their behavior extends to the businesses they
patronize. This represents an opportunity for
London Marriott Hotel to use the Sustainable
Forestry Initiative aspects of their operations to
draw in valuable customers. The Cornell study
shows that consumers are willing to support
and patronize such responsible behavior. The
next step is to effectively market the SFI
aspects of Marriott Hotel’s operations and to
launch a marketing campaign featuring the
hotel’s environmental and green move.

9. 9
FALL 2011 ENVIRONMENTAL MARKETING
Communication Objectives
!Inform at least 65 percent of the target market about the pressing environmental issues (global
and in the chain of hotels) and the positive impact and benefits of the initiative in Marriott
hotels within one year.
!Increase the proportion of the target market who have positive attitudes towards the initiative
!Reduce the proportion of the target market who have misunderstandings and misconceptions
about the costs
!The biggest advertising investments are in business sectors that represent a large portion of the
individual ecological footprint: food, transport, energy
!Example: Airline Industry
!The position they hold and the influence they have over consumers give them an
undeniable responsibility. This industry consumer a lot of non-renewable energy in
their operations. There is always the danger that their operations create substantial
adverse consequences for the environment and society. This fact is known publicly,
thus, they need to take steps towards reversing their ecological footprint. Conversely,
they can inspire and orient positive changes in behavior if they continue their
partnership with London Marriott, a green hotel.
!Take advantage of the partnership with airline companies.
!Partnering with an airline company who would want to publicize their relationship
with a green hotel such as Marriott will give the hotel an opportunity to penetrate its
communication channels which includes the airline company’s website, inflight
magazines, etc.
The values attached to the idea of sustainable development are now deeply rooted in social
and regulatory attitudes, and Marriott needs to communicate to their clients (corporations and
individuals) that they are there to help them realize the problem and implement their initiatives in a
rational way.

10. The Promotions Mix
1
As it is part of the promotions mix,
advertising will be used in order to increase the
awareness of Marriott hotel’s involvement in
environmental actions. For this study, we will use
different channels to achieve this objective:
Radio: All our advertisements will be
channeled through BBC Radio 2, one of the
main stations in the United Kingdom and
the most popular one with 13.7 million
listeners.
Magazines: The most popular ones were
selected to maximize reach. Examples of
which are « The Daily Telegraph »
publishing 843 000 copies and « The
Times » publishing 617 000 copies in order
to inform the largest amount of English
people. Moreover, we decided to publish
ads about the Marriott’s hotels and their
green initiative in a more targeted magazine
such as « The Economist » providing 102
million copies per publication.
Internet: Advertisement in the form of
banners will be placed on specialized
websites such as www.theecologist.org
which gets an audience of 95 000 persons
per month.
For the public relations aspect of the
promotions mix, journalists from “The
Economist” (1,2 million copies) and the
“Environment Industry Magazine” (30 000 copies)
will be asked for public releases about Marriott’s
hotels and especially their green initiatives in order
to stress awareness and increase credibility.
The group then thought of establishing
partnerships with United Kingdom bound airlines
to promote Marriott’s eco-friendly actions in
exchange of special offers provided for flight
attendants. This initiative will be based on:
The publication of visual ads and posters of
2
Marriott’s hotels in the airports of airlines;
The availability of in-flight magazines
endorsing the Marriott chain of hotels for
travelers;
The airlines’ websites;
Upon booking, a client will have the
possibility to tick a Marriott booking
option at the end of his flight booking;
The sending and emailing about the
closest Marriott hotel according to the
customer’s destination after a flight
booking and, more innovatively, the
sending of SMS. Indeed, SMS was
adopted by the youngest and 56% of
people aged more than 40 years are using
it. It’s an innovative tool of
communication as it was for the email 10
years ago. This tool has a high reading
rate (90%), it’s used by all, involves high
memorization, a high reactivity of the
target, and a quicker setting than emailing.
With consent from the airline companies,
their customer database will be used to
appropriate our services to different
customers (with a box ticking system at
the end of the flight booking to allow
Marriott’s hotels to use data such as phone
numbers or e-mail addresses).

Regarding the other promotional methods,
we plan to redesign the existing Marriott website
focusing on environmental issues and well-being
of customers. In the same way, we will develop
Marriott accounts on social networking sites such
as Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and LinkedIn.
Indeed, nowadays, websites have been overtaken
by social media as it is considered as a good
means to collect consumers’ data, increase the 2.0
visibility, and demonstrate the credibility and the
expertise of Marriott’s hotels, the exchange of
behaviors and mutual aids.

11. Sources:

•Elliott J. A. (1999) An introduction to sustainable development, London ; New York :
Routledge
•Hampton, S. (2006). Marriott goes 'smoke-free' at all hotels in North America – more
than 2,300 properties and 10 lodging brands.Available:
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Dec 2011.
•Marriott Hotels. (). Doha Marriott Hotel. Available:
http://www.marriott.com/hotels/hotel-information/travel/dohmc-doha-marriott-
hotel/. Last accessed 4th Dec 2011.
•Marriott Hotels. (). London Marriott Hotel Park Lane. Available:
http://www.marriott.co.uk/hotels/travel/lonpl-london-marriott-hotel-park-lane/.
Last accessed 4th Dec 2011.
•Marriott Hotels. (2010). Marriott 2010 Annual Report. Available:
http://investor.shareholder.com/mar/marriottAR10/index.html. Last accessed 4th
Dec 2011.
•Rodrigues, J. (2010). Green Hotels – Marketing and Profitability Advantages of
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education-training/green-hotels-marketing-profitability-advantages-environmentally-
friendly-practices/. Last accessed 4th Dec 2011.
•Sustainable Forestry Initiative. (2009). Comment obtenir la certification selon les
normes SFI. Available: http://www.sfiprogram.org/french/files/How-to-certify-
%20Fr.pdf . Last accessed 4th Dec 2011.
•Wikipedia. (). Marriott International. Available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriott_International. Last accessed 6th Dec 2011.
•United Nations Environment Programme: Division for Technology, Industry and
Economics. (). Sustainability Communications: A Toolkit for Marketing and
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Last accessed 6th Dec 2011.