The European Shift: Why Sustainability is Your Passport to the EU Market

The European Union is clamping down on greenwashing, and it is going to affect you even if you are thousands of miles from Europe. In this episode, Samantha Smits discusses the 'Empowering Consumers Directive' and why your European agents are suddenly asking for hard evidence. Learn why sustainability is no longer a 'marketing ploy' but a literal passport to market access, and how to avoid becoming 'difficult to do business with' by preparing your evidence now.

Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website.

Work with me: Are you a tourism leader looking to professionalise your operations and meet international certification standards? Let’s talk about how to protect your profit and give you your time back.

You can plan a call with me here.

Love the show? Please follow, rate, and review The Sustainability Edge: Your Tourism Podcast on your favourite podcast app. Your support helps us reach more visionary leaders in the industry.

The Sustainability Edge is hosted by Samantha Smits, your guide to turning sustainability into a competitive edge.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It is going to protect market access, your profit, it's gonna serve as a passport to a premium market, that you're going to be a preferred partner. I can now already see it in my work that there are big names already losing agents. Hi, I'm Clementus Smith and welcome back to the Sustainability Edge, the tourism podcast. No Yargon, no fluff. We're breaking down sustainability and especially how to turn sustainability in a practical tool that gives you more profit, more time, stuff that's staying in a business you can be proud of. Let's get started. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the podcast. And today we are talking about the shift that is has been going on for some time, but is becoming more and more stronger as we go. So I really want to discuss it with you. And it really affects you if you are or want to work with the European market, where I mean if you have an agent for Europe or if you receive clients from Europe, you need to understand what is going on, and it does keep ever changing. So to keep this podcast relevant for longer time, it's gonna be tricky to mention all the names, but do hear me out here because even if you are not operating in the EU, if you are an operator or even an accommodation outside of Europe, yes, it'll come back at you too. So do hear me out. The point being, agents in Europe are being regulated by the European Union. Yes, that might not be yours, but this is happening. And what is happening that there has been a lot of greenwashing globally, meaning that people say they are super sustainable and that they are doing the best things in the world, claiming that they are somehow climate neutral company, even if I don't know how that would ever happen. But they have zero evidence, or they cannot show you how. And for some companies, they honestly they're just doing their best and they have zero bad intent. But as you can imagine, there's also plenty of companies that are using a lot of the sustainability, or even nowadays with regeneration, they're using it as a marketing ploy. So there already has been for quite some years a big issue in the marketing of actual impact and with greenwashing. And the European Union, shortly said, is very much done with that. And for quite some time, the Green Claims Directive seems to bring a lot of change in there. But at this moment, I'm recording this in March 2026. That one, unfortunately, at the moment has been postponed. But something that is actually going to happen very soon is the Empowering Consumers Directive. And that doesn't even relate specifically to tourism. It can be fashion, it can be mining, it can be any kind of business really. But for any kind of business where sustainability claims are made that could potentially mislead a potential customer, there are going to be consequences resulting in fines specifically. Which means that anyone operating in the European land space, and no matter what industry or sector they are in, they are going to have to be much more careful with any words they write or send out into the world. Which then also is in tourism. So if what now is happening, an agent is claiming that they are super sustainable, they care a lot about it, and this is where it comes back at you, they will also have to look at their supply chain. Which means if you have an agent in Europe who is known for their sustainability values and is being super sustainable in their home country, if you, as their local operator or DMC, being in their supply chain, are not doing the same things, not because you don't care, but maybe because you don't know, or even the other way around, it can hurt them because then they will have zero evidence that truly their entire company, including the supply chain, could be sustainable. They can then not claim that they are very sustainable if they have no evidence that every single detail of the company is, including you. And that's where it is coming back to you and might become a headache if you don't start caring about it soon enough. So there is actually a problem that is going to be regulated, and they some agents are can lose the ability to sell you or to sell your products or your destination, even, because they are regulated and you're not making it easy for them to comply. And that's a shame because you might have a very long-standing relationship with your agents or with your European partners, which you happily want to continue. But if you cannot provide them with the evidence they need, or they don't want to run their own audits on you or write a report about you, because a report is one of the strongest ways to provide the evidence to claim that the company is sustainable, which is all just a lot of extra work, especially if you've never done that before. Very understandably for both of you, you'll be like, oh no, I don't, I'm busy enough in my business. Why should I now add this as well and create an impact report and make every number traceable? It is such a crazy extra amount of work. But that would technically be needed if you are not caring about this yet. So this could cost you business, even because then it's much easier for your agents to find a partner that, for example, already is certified by a credible scheme, or that does put out a strong annual impact report where every number can be traced down to the detail because it already exists. They don't have to do any new work. It is easy to do business with them. Whereas at that point with you, it has become difficult to do business with you because they can get fined, because they want to claim they're sustainable, but the supply chain cannot be proved to be sustainable, and that is where you have to start to care about. So the filter and the competition between finding an agent didn't necessarily become more difficult. I would some would argue it has become easier because now there is a stronger pathway about what sets me apart from my competitors, what makes me an easier choice, and what makes it easier to do business with me. And whether you do this through a certification like Travelife, Grinky, Fair Trade Tourism, or any GCC scheme, or are starting to determine your own points to measure, which we discussed in an earlier episode, KPIs, key performance indicators. It really is key that you start telling your sustainability story, but with the needed data and the needed evidence. And why I usually mention certification for this is because it gives you the framework and you have to figure out less what to talk about and what to do, because they present you literal criteria about you, let's do it above this, and they ask you for the evidence, and all those schemes do result in the report without all the guessing work. So it just gives you the whole framework of what to do, and it can always be presented to your agents, and it's the ultimate proof that you have been verified by third-party experts. So this is what I now see happening more and more. For example, with my coaching work for travel life, or even my direct consultancy work, that companies approach me or are assigned to me and maybe don't even know about sustainability in the beginning, but they have a little bit of a panic because they have been asked by their agents, hey, why haven't you done this yet? Or is this something you could pursue? And there they might think, Oh yeah, let me try it out, and then they learn that there's some work involved, and then they feel defeated, but they want to keep the partnership that they have been building for years. And yeah, that it's quite of a struggle if you keep postponing it. And quite some sustainability consultants have been warning companies for this point for years, especially the ones even outside of Europe, because understandably a lot of you say, but what power does the European Union have over us? I mean, we're not in Europe, and yes, fully, fully correct, absolutely, they will not find you, but indirectly it is finding you because if you lose the business partner who's going with your competitor because they are certified or because they have the strength to produce their own credible impact reports, then you are still feeling the results, right? And this is why, how repetitive it may be, a lot of sustainability consultants keep repeating this message. First, the Green Claims Directive was used, but now really the consumer, the empowering consumers directive is happening this year, 2026. So it really is becoming more and more urgent. And I always preach start rather sooner than later, because now you have the peace of finding things out as you go, and it will be a much less stressful experience if you start experimenting with this earlier and you can make priorities. Let's experiment with this point first, let's focus on water first, or the community, or this park close to us, and that you then expand as you go, rather than when you get that email from your agent, hey, this has been implemented, we really value the business relationship we've had so far, but going forward by our company policy, we really need you to pursue this certification, and that you're like, heh, where did that come from? If you're listening to this podcast, now you know. And if we talk about mindset, do not think so much of it as it being an extra chore or it's being an extra problem. It will really set you apart because something that was said in ITB, the sea of sameness, that people are competing so much in the same space with the same product, with the same destination, the same everything. What sets you apart? Really, a little a little bit of a pricing difference is not gonna set you apart if everything is exactly the same. Because people want to feel right with you, people want to feel relaxed, want you to arrange it all, and how can they see that all beforehand? Something that really sets you strongly apart is going into sustainability, and especially as sustainability is the new default way of doing business, because uh this could be a whole other episode, and I believe it already is, that tourism itself is such an exploitive and destructing system at the moment, why F1 is calling to move it to a sustainable one, because the verb to sustain is to make something more durable, and that includes your business. So, this whole move, I find it a good move, and I think it will come with quite some impact because people now have to wake up and see that this is really needed for your business and for everyone involved, but I can also see to what stress it will lead for people that have not followed these developments, because not everyone is in the bubble. Unfortunately, the world of sustainable tourism can still be at bubble at some times, but it might make the bubble a little bit bigger, and at some point it shouldn't be a bubble, it should be the default. Because going in with this and keeping your agents like this or getting access to European agents like this, it is going to protect market access, your profit, it's it's gonna serve as a passport to a premium market, it will bring you so much, you're going to be a preferred partner. I can now already see it in my work, even that there are big names already losing agents because they just refuse to comply with maybe one specific criteria because they find it too difficult, or it's a remind or they have to change something fundamentally fundamentally about their business, or they have to start paying better, some kind of these things, and when they refuse to comply with such a thing because everything has worked well into today, why would I change it? And then they realize that their agents actually care a lot about it, or even if they didn't, they are going to be regulated. You see that they have to make different choices, or that they stop buying a specific product from you, even that they stay in business with you for one of your other products, but that for a specific product, if you cannot come with the needed evidence, they will buy that product from someone else. So it doesn't even have to be fully business-wise, it can even be on a product level, which is why it's so key to start looking into this. If you basically if you are ready to stay on such a partner list, or if you're looking to enter such a market space, and how can you get on board to this whole sustainability thing, or if you know about it, but you're just too overwhelmed, too busy to take it on yourself. I invite you to look up in the show notes to book a call with me. We're going to look at your current standing, what are you doing already, what is already available. We can easily identify what evidence is easy to collect and to create, and I can easily see are you already ready for certification? A lot of certificates also have a recognition level, for example, Travel F2 operators has a partner level. So I'm really optimistic in this. There's so much opportunities, it's becoming more and more accessible, especially because it's becoming the new default of doing business. So hop on the call, give the try. I highly invite you. Would love to see what you're up to and to get your audit ready. And until next time. Thank you for listening and congratulations on investing your time today to think strategically about your future, to make sure you never miss a step to understand sustainability better, how to grow your competitive edge. Follow the podcast right now. And if this was helpful, please leave a five star rating. It will help other people like you to find these tools. I'm Samantha Smith, and I'll see you in the next episode.