#15 – Green Nudging
Making Sustainability a Tangible Experience

Good afternoon everyone, and thank you for being here.

Today, I’m excited to share with you the journey and the key insights of our Sustainability Innovation Project – a project built on one simple idea: sustainability becomes powerful when people can experience it, rather than when it is imposed on them.

The Core Idea & Innovation

Our project started with a question:

How can we make sustainability feel natural, intuitive, and meaningful — both for guests and for employees?

We know that “green nudging” as a concept is not new. But we wanted to take it one step further. Instead of adding rules, restrictions, or financial incentives, we focused on shaping environments where climate-friendly decisions happen almost automatically.

The innovation lies in this shift:

from telling people what to do, to inspiring them through mindful living, real experiences, and subtle contextual cues.
In other words: we make sustainability tangible — through action, through atmosphere, and through authentic role modelling.

Our Goal & Target Group

We deliberately chose not to target people who already live sustainably.
Instead, we focused on those who care, but who haven’t yet integrated eco-friendly habits into their daily lives.

Our goal was to create experiences that make sustainability approachable, enjoyable, and easy to adopt.
Through hands-on learning, simple eco hacks, inspiration, and freely accessible resources, we wanted to close knowledge gaps, offer quick-win solutions, and motivate people without adding extra effort.

Actions Taken

Every partner defined what nudging means for them, identified existing nudges, and explored new ones.
We collected all findings, aligned them, and turned them into a shared development roadmap.

At the same time, we started building a platform to document our experiences and make them accessible to others:
www.staystainable.at

Challenges & How We Solved Them

Our biggest challenge was alignment. With so many possible nudges and different operational realities, choosing the “right” ones was not easy.

The breakthrough came when we stepped back and asked:
What is the deeper motivation behind each nudge? What are we all trying to achieve?

By identifying shared goals, we were able to individualize the path while staying aligned in our purpose.
This insight eventually shaped our long-term vision — to create a platform that supports others in making the same decisions.

Outcomes & Impact

The biggest outcome of our project is clarity:
Sustainability is not one-size-fits-all — but the goals often are.

Our nudges have already shown measurable success:

• Guests appreciate having a choice rather than a rule
• Water, energy, and cleaning materials are being saved
• Hotels are seeing reductions in room cleaning of up to 36%

Even though the numbers vary between companies, the general insight remains the same:
Mindful engagement works when guests feel empowered, not restricted.

Lessons Learned

From our experience, we can highlight a few important takeaways:

• Nudges must be adapted to the company’s culture and target group
• Small, low-cost ideas can create a surprisingly big impact
• Freedom of choice is essential
• Shared learning accelerates innovation
• Documenting experiences helps others succeed faster
• Sustainability is an ongoing process, not a one-time project

Future Outlook

Our work doesn’t end here.
We plan to further develop our nudges, monitor their long-term effects, and expand our community.

Through www.staystainable.at, we will continue sharing insights, adding new blog posts, documenting challenges, and offering guidance.
We’ll also open a WhatsApp community to create a quick and direct exchange among interested businesses.

Our long-term vision is to contribute to a growing network of hotels and tourism partners who support each other in making sustainability practical, meaningful, and easy to implement.

Closing

To conclude, our project shows that sustainability becomes powerful when it feels natural, authentic, and individually adapted.
By learning from each other and by sharing our experiences openly, we can create real, lasting impact — one mindful decision at a time.

Thank you very much.

And now, I’d like to briefly introduce you to our website: www.staystainable.at.