Best of 2024: Sustainability | Smart Meetings

The world of sustainable events is bigger than ever. As more hospitality and tourism planners and partners incorporate sustainability into their business models, sustainability has become a necessity rather than a nice-to-have.

This year, Smart Meetings has released a range of sustainability content, particularly around how-tos, ensuring everyone has access to the knowledge and resources to confidently talk about sustainability and implement it into their business practices.

Your Complete Guide to Sustainability

This January 2024 article is intended to provide a comprehensive, introductory, concise, guide-like overview of sustainable development. Wondering how to start carbon tracking? What counts as Scope 3 emissions? Where do carbon emissions come from? Listing “need to know” sustainability terms, simple explanations, and tips for incorporating sustainable practices into your event planning strategy, this article is a tool you’ll want to bookmark.

Sustainability tools that simplify green planning

Planning a sustainable event is no small task. Working with a partner can help take a lot of the load off. In this article, Smart Meetings has compiled a list of some of the most timely and impactful partners and tools you need to use when building green meetings.

Earth Day is a call to action

Think of Earth Day as a “Green New Year.” As the New Year approaches, it feels even more meaningful to adopt this mindset again. Today, single-use plastics are passé. In this article, you’ll learn more about the impact of plastic on the environment and tell us why. Plus, with 2024 being celebrated for major sustainability achievements, you’ll want to know there’s plenty of reason to celebrate.

Sustainable Event Planning: Action Steps for a Lasting Strategy

In October, Smart Meetings hosted a webinar that included sustainability thought leaders in the travel and meetings industry: Ellie Hurley, events director, Financial and Insurance Meeting Professionals (FICP); Tiffany Eck, Visit Denver Destination Services Associate Director; and Lori Allen, MetLife Vice President of Global Event Operations.

They discuss how to develop actionable sustainability strategies and achieve successful results in their own companies. This article breaks down their conversation. As an added bonus, you can stream the webinar here.

Healthy World: Overtourism and crowd avoidance

Sustainability is not just about the planet. It’s also about the people who live in it. This article’s assessment of overtourism, using the protests in Barcelona in the summer of 2024 as an example, shows how care for the planet and care for humanity can coexist in parallel. Once an understanding of the cross-cutting elements of sustainability is established in this way, it provides some actionable steps that planners can take as part of the solution.