The Sustainability Edge: Your Tourism Podcast

Samantha Smits
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Hosted by Samantha Smits, The Sustainability Edge helps tourism leaders turn sustainability into their biggest asset. Get short, sharp episodes with the advice you need to stop the money leaks and make sustainability work for your bottom line, whilst doing good.

  1. 1d ago

    Do You Still Have The Sustainability Sign Guests Stopped Seeing Years Ago?

    Nearly every bathroom in the accommodation industry carries the same small card asking guests to reuse their towels. For most guests, it has quietly become wallpaper, and for many properties, it is the only sustainability message a guest ever sees during their stay. In this episode, Samantha explores what happens when your most visible sustainability communication goes unnoticed, and why guests may assume you're doing nothing even when you're doing a lot behind the scenes. Samantha also shares a shower-wall note in Cape Town that she still remembers years later, and looks at how to make a message feel like it came from a real person, tied to a real place. She covers how tour operators can repeat key messages across several touchpoints, and offers a short tour of nudging ideas, including rewards and gamification. The common thread here is specificity. Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

  2. Sep 29

    How Much Did Your Team Forget This Year? Find Out What Knowledge Walks Out the Door Every High Season.

    Every high season, tourism businesses relearn the same lesson: brand standards, guest-complaint scripts, vehicle checks, housekeeping routines, all explained again to a new crop of seasonal staff, because the people who knew it last year are already gone. It's treated as an unavoidable cost of seasonal work, but it's actually a documentation gap hiding in plain sight. In this episode, Samantha unpacks why that gap matters more for sustainability specifically. No two operators define sustainability the same way so how a complaint gets handled will have to live somewhere other than one manager's memory. She walks through what this looks like for an accommodation's housekeeping turnover and for a tour operator managing freelance drivers, and reframes the fix. Knowledge was never lost because it was hard to learn; it was lost because it was never captured outside one person's head. That single-point-of-failure risk is exactly what auditors probe under the labour and training section of any sustainability certification. Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

  3. Sep 22

    What Does a Real Sustainability System Actually Look Like? Most Businesses Never Find Out.

    Tourism businesses chasing Green Key, Travelife, or Fair Trade Tourism certification keep running into the same term in their audit checklists, 'sustainability management system', without ever getting a plain-language answer for what it actually means. This puts them at a disadvantage next to competitors who've quietly built one already. In this episode, Samantha breaks the term down into four concrete habits: a written policy, tracked KPIs, a named coordinator, and a regular review cycle. She shows why none of these require software, a big budget, or a full-time hire to get started. The real insight is that most listeners have already been building this system piece by piece across previous episodes without realizing it. That's the shift this episode makes explicit: sustainability stops being a source of guilt or overwhelm the moment it becomes a habit instead of a task list. Stick around for the accommodation and tour operator side-by-side examples that show this system in action. And in the show notes, a case study of an operator who used exactly this approach to get certified and triple their business. Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

  4. Sep 15

    The Hidden Audit Risk Hiding in Your AI-Generated Reports

    More and more tourism businesses pursuing Travelife, Green Key, or GSTC certification are reaching for AI tools to draft their sustainability policies and reports. On the surface, it looks like a shortcut everyone else is already taking. But a new failure pattern is showing up in audits: confident, well-written documents built on claims nobody actually verified. In this episode, you'll learn why using your certification body's own checklist is still the right move, and the specific habit highlighting every factual claim and asking 'do I actually know this, or does it just sound true'. That is what catches most of these problems before an auditor ever does. The throughline is simple but easy to miss under deadline pressure. AI can help you write faster, but it can't tell you what's actually true about your business. Treating a generated claim as fact instead of a first draft is exactly what turns a time-saving tool into a bigger time cost and a credibility risk down the line. Two scenarios walk through exactly how this plays out on the ground. Both show precisely where an auditor's questions expose the gap and what to do instead. Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

  5. Sep 8

    Would a Stranger Catch What You Missed, Before an Auditor Does?

    Last episode was about whether your suppliers can back up what they claim. In this episode, Samantha Smits turns that question back on you: could your own team answer a hard sustainability question cold, with no warning and no chance to check with someone else first?  When you write your own policies and train your own team, everyone shares the same blind spots and stops noticing the gaps. Learn why a 'sustainability mystery guest' like a distant cousin or even a guide from another route can catch blind spots your team has stopped seeing.  Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

  6. Sep 1

    Your Supplier Can't Answer "Where Does This Come From?" Here's the Problem

    You trust your suppliers. But when an auditor asks, "Where does this actually come from?", does your supplier have an answer or just a feeling? In this episode, Samantha Smits digs into a certification blind spot that catches even well-meaning accommodations and tour operators off guard: supplier evidence.  Whether it's food from the local market, maintenance records from your garage, or training documentation, an auditor can't accept trust as proof. Samantha walks through real examples of where the gap shows up, why it has nothing to do with your supplier doing anything wrong, and how a simple, non-confrontational conversation can turn a trusted relationship into usable, tangible evidence,  protecting the honest work you're already doing. Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

  7. Aug 25

    The One-Pager That Wins the Booking: Turning Sustainability Data Into Your Sales Advantage

    Agents overseas are flooded with beautiful stories from every property and operator pitching to them. Sunset views, friendly staff, untouched wilderness. But almost none of them back it up with real numbers.  In this episode, Samantha Smits pulls together everything from recent episodes to show you exactly how to close that gap. Learn why attaching a simple sustainability one-pager to your existing rate sheet or brochure can set you apart instantly, how accommodations and tour operators can each use their own data to diversify from the pack, and why choosing a cause close to your heart (not just a generic "we're sustainable" claim) makes you memorable.  Samantha also ties it all back to tracking the right numbers, certification, and why starting small beats waiting for the "perfect" story. Plus: don't miss the case study on tripling bookings through sustainability. Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

  8. Aug 18

    Stop Negotiating in High Season: When and How to Talk to Your Suppliers

    Many tourism businesses assume that supplier conversations are only necessary when prices jump or orders go wrong, completely missing how much leverage they hold during their quietest months. In this episode, Samantha Smits explains why the low season, not high season, is the best time to renegotiate what you pay your existing fuel, food, and laundry suppliers, and how to use that exact same window to secure genuine sustainability commitments. Learn how to transform routine contract renewals into strategic partnerships, shift away from price-only negotiations, and build a collaborative, future-proof supply chain that strengthens your bottom line and your overall impact.  Connect with Samantha Smits on LinkedIn or her website. Are you a tourism CEO looking to protect your international contracts and cut daily operational costs? Download your free copy of the B2B Tourism Blueprint here to stop cash leaks, satisfy international agents, and stay ahead of strict compliance rules. Ready for direct advice? You can plan a Match 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.

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Hosted by Samantha Smits, The Sustainability Edge helps tourism leaders turn sustainability into their biggest asset. Get short, sharp episodes with the advice you need to stop the money leaks and make sustainability work for your bottom line, whilst doing good.

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