The Sustainability Genie: Granting Eco-Friendly Wishes in Hospitality | Milena S. Nikolova, CEO and Co-Founder, Behavior Smart

In this episode of the Sustainable Hospitality Podcast, host Amy Wald interviews Milena S. Nikolova, founder of Behavior Smart. Milena explains how her company uses insights from human psychology and behavior to help tourism and hospitality businesses achieve their sustainability goals in a way that enhances rather than sacrifices guest satisfaction.

Some key points:

·By understanding travelers' hearts and minds, experiences can be designed that create more positive memories and impact for both guests and destinations

·Behavior-based techniques can gently nudge travelers to make more sustainable choices, like eating local food or reducing waste, without negatively impacting their experience

·Small, smart changes in how options are presented, like highlighting a vegetarian dish as the "chef's special," can dramatically influence choices

·Hospitality businesses should start making gradual sustainability improvements now to prepare for the next generation of travelers who will expect it

Milena provides examples of projects Behavior Smart has done and practical tips for how hotels can get started applying behavioral insights. She emphasizes that meaningful change is possible without disrupting business models or guest satisfaction.

 #TravelPsychology, #GuestExperience, #TourismImpact, #GreenTravel, #SustainableTourism, #ResponsibleHospitality, #ConsciousTravel ,#MindfulTourism, #LocalFood ,#FoodWaste, #TravelTrends, #FutureofTravel, #HospitalityInnovation, #SmartSustainability, #SustainabilityPodcasts, #PodcastInterviews, #GenZ, EarthDay2024

Transcript

Amy Wald (00:09):

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Sustainable Hospitality Podcast. Today we have Milena Nicolo who is with Behavior Smart, and she is doing incredible work behind the scenes on human behavior change to help propel the tourism and hospitality industry in the right direction. I can't wait to hear all about what that really means and how we can apply that to our everyday organizations and the way we're doing business and the work that you are doing with the Travel Foundation, which I'm a huge fan of. Thank you so much for taking the time today, Milena, how are you? 

Milena Nikolova (00:53):

You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Amy. I'm super excited to be here. I am doing great, and I am excited about this discussion as well. 

Amy Wald (01:02):

Oh, wonderful. Well, we know you're busy, so we're going to try not to keep you too long this morning. Where are you today, by the way? 

Milena Nikolova (01:10):

So today I am in Sofia, Bulgaria, that's in Eastern Europe, and this is what I call home. This is where I usually am when I'm not on airplanes or at destinations, and this is where my family is based. 

Amy Wald (01:27):

Oh, wonderful. Well, I hope everyone's safe there and I know that you're close to some contentious areas, so hoping everyone is safe and well in your family. 

Milena Nikolova (01:43):

Thank you so much. Yes, we are. At the same time, yes, we are too close to two countries that are now involved in realities that we never thought that we will witness in our generation. So in many ways it's scary and it's also a reminder that every opportunity we have to do things the right way should not be undermined because when you keep undermining things get out of control. 

Amy Wald (02:14):

I love that this conversation, even though it's travel and tourism and some people wouldn't think there's, it can be related. I do believe it can be related, and I think that the more that we can infuse these kinds of thought processes and ideas into our businesses, they will hopefully trickle down into even maybe people that aren't traveling or just so many different ways to take the world in a better direction with Absolutely. Things like this 

Milena Nikolova (02:53):

Absolutely trickle down and trickle up as well because when more and more of us as individual citizens or as organizations and companies which are also members of society do the right thing and also demand that others do the right thing, then the people who are at the top representing us will have less wiggle room to go in the wrong direction. I think 

Amy Wald (03:21):

You said it perfectly. That's what I was trying to say. That's why I leave it up to the expert. 

Milena Nikolova (03:27):

That's why a conversation is always better than one directional lecture or talk. 

Amy Wald (03:34):

Yes. Well, we can't wait, and I want to give the audience a little bit of a background on you and then I'm going to let you expand on that. But your superpower, which really is a superpower, is understanding travelers', hearts and minds in your work. You are working with companies and destinations using human psychology to help them make travel more impactful for people, businesses, and places. And your favorite topics revolve around how behavior smart thinking can help make sustainability effortless, but a non-negotiable and how experiences can be designed to enhance happiness and our connection to nature. Oh my gosh, that's perfect. So gosh, tell us a little bit more about that and how did you get into this area of work, which is so rare really, but so important and empowering and impactful. 

Milena Nikolova (04:39):

Thank you. Yes. So 

(04:43)
Telling you more first starting with a little bit more about the area of expertise, let me just give you a simple example. When we understand how people, when they're in their leisure travel, business travel mode, think about their upcoming trip, how they make decisions about where they're going to stay, what they're going to do in the free evenings after the end of their meetings, or how they will plan their entire holiday, they use their hearts in many ways and their minds. I mean, some of the decisions we make are rational and more focused on functional and operational aspects, which will remove or at least minimize the likelihood for hiccups or any hassle along the trip. And then other decisions we make purely with our heart, based on the desire and ambition to make the best out of a holiday, to create more memories, to have more magical moments together with whoever we are traveling or with people we meet along the trip. 

(06:01)
So if we really understand how the traveler's heart and traveler's mind work, we can design impactful experiences that create more of these memories that everyone wants to take home and really leave people with the sense of rejuvenation, reward, happiness, enrichment, really. So what we are trying to do is saying, okay, this is definitely contributing to wellbeing, to the wellbeing of individuals, to the wellbeing of society. If more people travel and return happier and learn more about other cultures and other places, they will be, it's part of their personal growth, right? They're feeling better, happier, healthier, and so on. Now that same knowledge can go even further and do much not to build on the individual and social happiness, but also to ensure that all of this is happening in balance with the wellbeing of our planet, with the wellbeing of communities and societies. So what we are doing here is taking the knowledge that for the moment we have focused on more in commercial sense in order to increase satisfaction or get people to buy more and so on. 

(07:35)
And we are taking that knowledge and using it, employing it in order to increase that balance between human wellbeing and the wellbeing of places in a way that also makes the economic benefits that tourism generates strong. So this is the idea of using knowledge about travelers', hearts and minds in order to make tourism more powerful and impactful. In terms of how I got there, it's actually an interesting path. My undergraduate and graduate degree were in human behavior and psychology, and it just happened so that my first job was actually at an organization which was working here in Bulgaria. It was an American organization that was working here in Bulgaria. Imagine these are the years soon after the iron curtain fell and our entire eastern block was sort of transitioning from one social and market order to a completely different one. So there's fundamental changes that were needed in society, and one of these fundamental changes was that there was no NGOs in socialist society, and so US government was actually supporting the country and the institutions to nurture and create from scratch a sector of non-governmental organizations, charity organizations that actually played a role that that sector plays in a democratic society. 

(09:19)
And you can imagine that with zero experience, this was actually a very fundamental behavior change. People's mindset has to be changed in acquiring the culture of what an NGO is, how it works, how do you behave, how do you interact with the public sector and the private sector and so on. And then on top of that culture, you also had very specific skills and tools you needed to use. And almost the entire team consisted of psychologists, the entire team working on that project. This overlapped with the first year of my studies in psychology. So you can imagine that it was such an extraordinary reality. On one side I was going to lectures, learning about the theories in psychology, and then on the other side I had the opportunity to witness how people were taking that knowledge and flipping it into specific programs, content training formats that actually had to condense processes that the normal society take for decades into two years, three years. 

(10:41)
So that's when my desire to do something applied with the knowledge about human behavior was triggered. And how I ended up in tourism is also interesting. In 2003, I moved to the US to start my doctoral program at the George Washington University School of Business. I was accepted in the PhD program with consumer behavior, with consumer psychology and consumer behavior as my dominant field. And I started looking for funding because I had to leave the job that I had at home in order to focus on my studies. And I started looking for funding opportunities and I was offered a fellowship, great package for the duration of my studies by a small institute called International Institute of Tourism Studies, which was housed at the school of business at jw. And the only condition was that I make sustainable tourism my supporting field. And at the time I said, well, sustainability is definitely, I already had some interaction with the space. 

(11:56)
So I said, that's definitely where societies will be going in the future. So definitely an interesting theme and travel, what's not to like about travel? It's an industry of happiness. So of course I took it without much thought and that's actually when my previous knowledge and desire to work with applied behavioral science, merit travel and sustainability. What really was fascinating for me is that when I started taking my tourism classes, like tourism planning and tourism policy and tourism marketing, I was really shocked at how the approach that was being taken and promoted to sustainability contradicted everything that I knew about behavior and behavior change. And that's when I realized actually there is an opportunity at one point to connect the two and begin eliminating these conflicts between what we want to achieve and how people really go about change, especially as it relates to something as complex and vague as sustainability. So a long story to explain that it was a curvy journey that got me to connecting everything in one. 

Amy Wald (13:19):

But I think when you're doing such incredible, unique work like this, it is always a curvy journey, right? It is. Especially to land somewhere where you're very passionate about it usually takes picking different fruits I guess as an analogy. So many things I want to ask you about that. I love that you called it an industry of happiness because that's the way I think of it. But if we don't start to look at things differently and we don't start to make some major changes, it's not going to be an industry of happiness. So I'm so glad you're doing this work. What does that research look like? Are you sampling and taking people through different types of organizations and then interviewing them? How does that happen? 

Milena Nikolova (14:12):

When we test a new method or a new technique or a new approach, you have to basically make sure that it's working. The thing that is specific about using behavior-based techniques is that you can never be certain that behavior will unfold in a certain way even if it has already done so in several other contexts simply because behavior, and this is one of the core themes that we talk about, behavior is shaped very much about the context in which we are about the very much by the moment in which we are acting and also by the people that's around us. And so in that sense, if providing people with some piece of information has done a great job at encouraging them to be more mindful of local culture in four different cities, destinations, that absolutely does not mean that it's going to work in the same way in the 50. So in that sense, we always take care to monitor, to observe. So there's actually two things that we do when we try to execute techniques that are based on psychology and behavior. The first is that we first try to really get a sense of the environment and the specific context. So this is where you want to know about the local culture. You want to know what are the barriers, why are people not doing this? 

(15:55)
Is it that they're not buying local, for example? Because generally they have the perception that local cuisine is very unusual or is not something that they're comfortable with, it's just too far from what they're comfortable with, or it's because they think it's more expensive, for example. So in both cases you want to understand what is the reason, because in these two cases you end up using very different techniques. You also want to know whether perhaps there might be some cultural factors that also play a role, whether it's on the local context side or on the traveler side. So you really want to understand very well what are the dynamics that are shaping the behavior that we want to change? Then we select what techniques might work best. As I said, if it's a matter of lack of information or wrong perceptions, then maybe communications can sort the problem. 

(16:59)
If it's a just barriers and hassle that prevents people from making the decision, it becomes too difficult for them, too complex, and they don't want to make an effort during holiday, then we seek to make it easier and use other interventions. But then we definitely have to observe the effects. Usually we try to pilot test. We are working with a real environment. It's not something that we can take into the lab, which is what many of the academic studies do. So we try to pilot test and see whether it's going to work perhaps with one hotel first to see how things unfold and what are some of the issues that maybe we just never thought might occur. Then we clean up the methodology and then we are much more confident to roll it out and include the other properties. So this is the way that we do it. 

(18:02)
The other thing that we do very much is actually we try to build on academic knowledge because as I mentioned, academic researchers have the resources and the means to conduct very clean experiments or experiments that are much cleaner than what you can do in the real world. We try to follow what's happening in the academic space and then take insights from experiments which were conducted by researchers at universities and apply them in the real world. So we try to stay very close to scientific knowledge and to academic research to make sure that we are utilizing the most current knowledge that's being produced by this sector. 

Amy Wald (18:52):

I was going to ask if there was one or the other that you thought was a better way of conducting this research, do you get better results in a lab, but then how do you really find out about interactions with a guest in the real world? So that answered my question. 

Milena Nikolova (19:18):

We try to, I mean, the best formula is to have very close collaboration between applied field and academic and the academic space. I've had the opportunity to be in academia for 15 years, so I feel comfortable being the bridge between the two. And this is why we still collaborate with a lot of colleagues in academia and we really respect and keep track of what academics are producing as insight and trying to operationalize it into the industry and cut the time that it takes for knowledge to channel from an academic journal into the field. 

Amy Wald (20:09):

I feel like a lot of these questions come back to from a hotelier perspective, always there are always worried about customer satisfaction, but sometimes that perception of what a customer wants could be incorrect. Are you finding that in your work? 

Milena Nikolova (20:34):

Absolutely. So there's several things that are important here. First, travelers or customers in don't always know what they want, and I don't mean it in a bad way, it's just that in many ways they don't know what are the possibilities out there. And in many cases, especially in travel, where the product is intangible and it triggers an experience, right? The activities, the service interaction it from a traveler point of view produces an experience. So you never know whether a small interaction with somebody local on the street or a very well staged hospitality service at the hotel property will be the highlight of the experience. You actually don't know. You can increase the likelihood that it'll be one or the other, but you never know because it's filtered through one's emotions, one's individual psychology preferences, emotional state, many, many factors. It's important to recognize that many of the things that we think are really important for travelers and for customers in general are not that important. 

(22:05)
And also that sometimes a customer might not express the desire for something and it still might end up being the most exciting things that think that they experience. That's one of the things. The second thing that is really, really important is that that focus, that customer-centric thinking that is very relevant to many other industries is not entirely relevant to the travel and hospitality sector simply because you have a situation where the customer is hosted by a business, by a destination, by a local community. So it's not that you're providing them with a product they take home or a service that they experience in their own environment. They actually are going into another environment, and that environment has physical dimensions. It also has cultural and social dimensions. So having an entire a hundred percent focus on the customer's wants and needs is simply not appropriate. It just doesn't work because the customer is utilizing and the business actually the hotel that's hosting the customer is utilizing resources that are the resources that technically belong to somebody else, to many other people. 

(23:42)
So in that sense that this customer-centric thinking has created damage in our sector, and you can see that many destinations and many mindful businesses already recognize that and they are trying to do their part in rebalancing this. I feel that the more businesses and hospitality companies get that sooner and start asking themselves, what does that mean for us the better? Because destinations are, many destinations I see are already recognizing that this is the case and that they need to encourage businesses to ensure that of course they meet the needs and wants of their customers, but they never sacrifice the benefits and the comforts of the local host. So we are going to see pressure on the private sector to align with that, especially by many, many destinations that already recognize this. And so businesses will do better and will adapt better if they start early rather than wait to at one point be pressured to do so. 

Amy Wald (25:08):

We all know data is so important when we're talking about a customer facing organization. Do you feel as though that can be extracted in a successful way? Or how do you feel like you can get data from a guest that is genuine and it isn't done in a hurry? What does that look like from a hotel's perspective? 

Milena Nikolova (25:40):

So we work in a field where our focus is on something as intangible as it can be. I mean, we talk about experience and as we said, this is so subjective. Human behavior is something that is influenced by so many factors that make it very difficult to judge and capture. I mean, there's certain parts that are objective, people are either recycling or they're not recycling. The share of local mills bought at a destination versus imported meals is an objective measure. So with our work, we sometimes are pretty lucky to have the opportunity to capture very objective data, such as what I said in that restaurant. We've either gotten an increase of 27% of local meals being sold or we haven't, right? So in that case, we have a very objective tangible data point that we can focus on and then we know we've achieved results. 

(26:54)
And I'll tell you, for example, a challenge we currently have with one of our projects, which works with small tourism companies across four countries in Europe, France, Italy, Slovenia and Norway. So what we're trying to do is feed these companies with behavior change techniques that help ensure that their clients produce less plastics waste, eat more locally, move around more with low footprint mobility options such as walking, biking, public transportation rather than renting a car or taking taxi and so on. And one of the areas where we are looking to make an impact is to reduce, to make people experience out the outdoors in a way that leaves zero footprint. Usually we mean waste, but also in general behaving in a way that doesn't disturb the natural environmental or wildlife that keeps people on the trails and so on and so forth. And the reality is that we cannot objectively know whether the fact that, for example, we've provided people with a bag that makes it very easy for them to pick up all of their waste and packaging and take it out of the natural area. 

(28:20)
We can count the bags we've given, but whether they've been used, we don't know because people are on their own, they wander out in nature, there's no guide with them to make an observation. There's no specific point where we are collecting the waste so we can monitor and increase in waste and so on. So we are struggling to really be sure and to measure the exact percentage of change. We know that we are creating favorable condition conditions by making it easy, by giving them a bag, by alerting them, by presenting this kind of behavior as a local norm. But we have no way of actually measuring. Yes, ideally maybe we can put people to go and capture information on the amount of waste or perhaps we can interview people on a trail and so on. But it is complicated it you can never really have the objective number that you get if you are working with the example that I mentioned earlier. 

(29:35)
So sometimes it's quite tough. I do want to say that with the technical solutions technology solutions, some of these things are becoming easier. So applications that facilitate self-guided experiences or that provide people with suggestions for places to visit and so on, some of these actually are making things easier because if you are using a self navigation platform, then we can get perhaps some data on whether really the recommendations that we've been trying to encourage to get people to walk more from places and to follow a certain path that allows them to actually use public transportation rather than other motorized vehicles and so on. We can see whether generally there has been a change in the patterns. So this is one moment when I do want to say that travel tech companies almost have a responsibility to help with these things because they have easy access and easy opportunity to influence sometimes with very little change, using a different language, using a different word, or providing different sequence of options. And I feel that the potential for impact that they have without at all hurting business and the commercial side of what they're doing really makes them important and brings responsibility for them to play a role in the travel ecosystem in a way that facilitates more responsible behavior. 

Amy Wald (31:28):

That makes sense. And I almost feel as though a traveler would feel less coerced when they are taking it on themselves and making that choice autonomously. That makes complete sense. So you mentioned that project. So what kind of projects are you working on? I would imagine there's some big brands out there that find your expertise and work really valuable to their business and their bottom line, and they're really future proofing their business in the long run, as you're saying, instead of being a laggard adopting these things earlier rather than later. So can you talk about some of the projects that you have worked on and what those results were? Sure, 

Milena Nikolova (32:22):

Sure. So we are a young venture. We've only been around for, actually we started the company, we started Behavior Smart two months before Covid came around, which on one side it feels crazy to start the business in that space at such a moment. But actually I have to say that for us it actually was a favorable circumstance because suddenly the entire industry was glued to the screens and was ready for new content, for new thinking. We all felt that we are experiencing a disruption and it's actually amidst this disruption that new ideas and very different approaches are accepted when things are going nice and smoothly and everybody is profiting and the industry is growing, nobody's undertaking fundamental change. So in that sense, the time when everybody was behind the screens and everybody was looking for something new was favorable for us because we were able to use that time and through plenty of webinars and digital conferences and digital sessions to begin introducing the notion of using human psychology in a way that addresses some of the challenges that the industry was facing. 

(34:03)
We actually worked on some projects which help people prepare for the mindset change that Covid was triggering. And that was very interesting and it also was a powerful demonstration to businesses and organizations that there is great merit in understanding human behavior because we were able to predict what are some of the patterns that will change in how people will look for, think about and engage in holiday behavior. So that was really, really, really powerful and it was also very interesting for us because it was such unusual ground for us to practice this kind of thinking. So much of our early training and project work was focused on that, what to expect, what mindset change do destinations and businesses need to expect and how to prepare for that. We also are doing a lot of work in the sustainability space. As I mentioned at the beginning of our conversations, human psychology can make a huge impact on your commercial success because it can help you design experiences that create delight and ultra high satisfaction. 

(35:29)
But we saw much more demand on the sustainability side. I think that Covid gave an opportunity to many operators, hospitality operators, but also destinations to recognize that there was a need for recalibration and reorganization in order to meet the needs of another crisis. And that's the climate crisis, the sustainability crisis. So that created a lot of demand for using our insights to produce, to feed the industry techniques and approaches that help them make sustainability or how should I say, to eliminate the conflict between sustainability goals and a satisfying experience for travelers. So this is what we do these days. Most often we work with destination authorities and with businesses sometimes with business clusters in order to provide them with techniques that allow them to achieve a sustainability goal based on what they have set as a priority. So it could be that it's ensuring that people experience the outdoors without leaving any trace behind or that it's aligning the service design with climate action goals. 

(37:03)
Many of the destinations in Europe are Glasgow, the declaration signatories, and so they are trying to ensure that their entire supply network is adjusted and enables the achieving of many of the goals that they have committed to. So we had a very interesting project, for example, with Visit Finland, where Finland by the way, is home to the highest number of signatories of the Glasgow declaration. So we worked with them and all Glasgow declaration signatories to begin introducing in their operations. Small, smart, they're small, but they're actually smart because with a small change, you are triggering behavior change, smart changes that lead or gently nudge travelers to choose those net zero option or to engaging experiences which are with minimal carbon footprint. And again, the goal is to do that without even touching the satisfaction. In fact, some of the work that we've done proves that it can enhance the satisfaction of travelers. 

Amy Wald (38:24):

So practically, if you were a hotelier listening to this conversation and you were thinking, I want to start researching or going down this road, what does that look like? Is that giving a traveler a choice? Is that silently just building it into your offering? How does that come to present itself? 

Milena Nikolova (38:59):

Great question. So for companies, usually we start with identifying the goal or the sustainability wish that we actually like to think ourselves as a company that as 

(39:18)
That sustainability genies that make sustainability wishes come true. So we start with the wish that a business has. I want to reduce carbon footprint, or in most cases actually we find that it's more practical and specific things such as I want to reduce food waste, I want to reduce the plastics waste, or I want to encourage people to buy more local. This is something that is very important both for destinations and businesses because it is a good thing you are doing for your entire local economy, for your suppliers and collaborators on the ground, but it's also something that helps save costs. If you rely more on local seasonal products, you do less import. That means lower costly also means lower carbon footprint. So it's one of these golden measures that almost every destination and every business is interested in. So we take your wish and then based on the business, so let's say that you are an accommodation facility. 

(40:35)
We try to map what are the points at which your workers or travelers are making a choice, which influences this specific outcome, this specific impact local buying. And we usually like to start with the easy changes. So for example, if let's say it's a matter of encouraging local buying, then we say, okay, well we know that people make decisions very often about food through their pleasure oriented brain. So that means that if we want them to be more likely to choose the local option, we need to present it as irresistible. And that means to use more emotional and engaging language to present that particular meal. And of course an attractive that makes it impossible for your client to resist that. So they buy it because they feel it's going to give them pleasure and satisfaction rather than because they feel they should be a responsible person and they should be spending in ways that help local farmers. 

(41:52)
So we start with these first mile techniques, we call them the first mile because they're relatively easy. They cost very often close to nothing. They take very little effort on the side of your employees or staff on your side as management as owner, but they actually produce results. And ideally we would stack several of these easy things which don't take much effort, and we would start seeing changes. Then we can make something more complicated and more complicated. And in fact, in order to make this to widen the effect of this work, because logically you also want to, let's say that you are a large hotel property, you have collaborators with whom you partner in order to offer experiences or to offer bikes for your guests, you have restaurants that you work with and so on and so forth. Ideally, some of the changes will channel also through your collaborators. 

(42:59)
So in order to make this happen at scale, we actually have engaged in a very interesting project to try to automate some of that work and enable properties and operators to go through changes like this through tailored sets of these mini changes in a way that really optimizes the behavior of their clients sometimes of their own staff members in order to optimize the effect that we are looking to produce. So this is the way to do it. We start with the wish and then we feed you with the behavior change techniques that make that wish come true. 

Amy Wald (43:50):

Wow. Now is that similar? So I know you work a lot with the travel foundation. I love Jeremy, they are doing amazing work. The two of you combined, it's going to, I do believe it's going to change the landscape in the future and really going to set the pace. I hope so too. But he mentioned a very simple change, and I believe this was in partnership with you, that moving a, let's say vegetarian or a vegan item on your menu just to let's call it the chef special or the daily special or that highlighted offering of that day, that week, whatever it may be, that automatically entices the guest. And there was some crazy percentage, I think 70 or 80% of people chose that option merely because of the placement of where that was. Is that a similar type of strategy?

Milena Nikolova (44:53):

Absolutely. As I mentioned, when we try to identify the most effective actions, we try to think what brain the traveler is using when they're making that decision. Are they using their practical brain that seeks to minimize any functional hiccups, in which case we look for simple hassle-free solutions, or we seek to provide to make the sustainable option hassle-free and easy to choose. Or they're using their pleasure driven brain, which is often what happens when we are choosing food that actually shapes the desire for something that will create more pleasure, that is exciting, interesting and so on. And based on the mode that we expect to see, we recommend techniques. One of the things that we see many businesses and destinations want is to promote more vegetarian meals. I see many events have made vegetarian the default or the only option. And this is one of the ways to actually lower the footprint of large gatherings. 

(46:13)
So in the case of restaurants and hotels, it's similar framing and presenting the vegetarian and the vegan option in a way that makes it irresistible, similar to what I described with the local option, increases tremendously the likelihood that it's going to be selected. So whether you are going to use a different description, whether you are going to highlight benefits such as healthier or fresh because it's seasonal and so on, or you are going to simply include it in today's specials or the chef's favorite automatically increase the likelihood that people will choose that. And the reality is that with many vegetarian options categorized in a section for vegetarians, they become invisible for the rest of the customers. And the reality is that most people who do not stick only to vegetarian, do eat vegetarian and they enjoy vegetarian in many cases, especially if it's well prepared and it's nice, delicious, fresh meal. It's just that they don't even look at it because it's in a section that doesn't apply to them. So sometimes removing and playing around with order with categories can do miracles again without changing the satisfaction of the guest

Amy Wald (47:49):

And possibly improving it. Gosh, that's such a simple technique, but it's something that I even think about myself. I am a pescatarian, but I do look for that vegetarian area, but that's because that's my category. So if your category is meat, you're automatically going to discount those other sections. And so putting it right in there, and it also elevates it, right? There's a psychology, I'm sure this is just as good, which is everything you're saying. Gosh, that is just so fascinating. So for the sake of time, because I don't want to keep you too long, but I could sit here and listen to this all day long, how do you give us your perspective on destinations and hotels that are feeling these pressures but just are terrified of changing their business model or that customer satisfaction element? I know you made a case for it, but what would you say directly to them as the landscape changes as things are really because of covid are really being looked at differently, how would you empower them to start to think about things differently? 

Milena Nikolova (49:15):

So first, COVID is probably the biggest natural experiment that human behavior can change drastically within a very short amount of time when the motivation is in place. So I think that we shouldn't fear behavior change. That's the first thing I agree, especially since we work in that area, that you need to do it in a way that is thoughtful and mindful of the potential risks. And this is why thinking about your specific context and selecting the things which are appropriate is so important to me. Starting small, or actually as I mentioned earlier, smart is probably a great way to approach it. And considering the fact that in many cases we actually do not have to make a disruptive changes, and in no way does that require change in the business model. So there's definitely many opportunities at every property, at every business to make relatively small adjustments that alter behavior or nudge the behavioral patterns in the desired direction in many cases without actually mindful recognition on the side of customers. 

(50:44)
The other thing that I think hospitality businesses should be mindful of is that while today we are doing that gently and looking to change the behavior, to change the design of the service, to change the behavior in the desired direction with the current traveler, the traveler of the next generation that's already knocking on the door of the market is with a completely different mindset. Younger generations expect sustainability by design. They do not question the importance of sustainability, and they actually will continue expecting businesses to make it very easy for them to behave sustainably and frustration will come when that's not the case. So in that sense, again, for the sake of being prepared for the upcoming demand changes, I would say start with the things which are lower risk, and definitely look at how you can gently be adjusting the design of your operations in a way that facilitates the behaviors that are good for you, that are good for the local place and good for the traveler because there are many golden spots when all of these three meet and produce a very satisfying business opportunity and travel experience opportunity. 

Amy Wald (52:14):

So well said. And really using that as your proof, right? When you conduct that own experiment within your organization, then it's proof that it works. It's not going to jeopardize your business, and then you can iterate and implement that into other areas and other wishes, as you said, 

Milena Nikolova (52:36):

Absolutely 

Amy Wald (52:37):

Malena, how can everyone find you? How can businesses reach out to you, follow your work, and seek you out for the genie service that you have? 

Milena Nikolova (52:49):

Thank you. So actually I do want to mention that on our website we try to maintain what we refer to as a knowledge corner. This is where our blog is hosted, but also a variety of resources that businesses, destinations and other organizations professionals can explore and see whether they are developing interest in this. There's very specific examples, webinars, and so on. And we are making these available, the industry so that people can educate themselves, see whether that's something they can relate to, and also take some steps on their own. So this is a great place to start and hopefully we'll spark more interest in this kind of thinking. And then always we try to stay active on LinkedIn, both as a company and us as individuals. So if you find me on LinkedIn, you will also be able to find our behavior smart profile and then see what we post. We try to share and activate interest in the Genie thinking. 

Amy Wald (54:14):

Those are great resources and we will make sure that we highlight those in the show notes so people can find you. I'm doing 30 Days of Earth Month tips, so I'm going to definitely make sure that I include you in that because I think this is such an exciting opportunity for hotels and tourism organizations. And ds, thank you so much for spending the time with us today, and I hope we can continue to support your work. It's so important, Milena, 

Milena Nikolova (54:52):

Thank you so much for your kind words, and I enjoyed the discussion as well very much. And hopefully we've helped some operators feel more confident about the fact that they can make a change towards the better without actually causing any disruption on their business or the way that they work. 

Amy Wald (55:14):

Absolutely, and please stay safe and we are sending love and prayers to anyone in your region that is going through such terrible times right now. We know that the world tourism could save the world, I think. So anything positive we can do to send to that area of the world. Thank you very much everyone for tuning back in. Please make sure to find me on LinkedIn, Amy Wald and the Sustainable Hospitality Podcast. Let us know what you loved about this episode and let us know what kind of content you would like to see so we can continue to help you on your sustainability journey. We will see you in the next episode. Have a great day.