Albergo Diffuso: a Sustainable and Socially Innovative Business Model

The tourism and hospitality industry has gradually grown and become more diverse over time, making it one of the biggest and fastest-growing industry in the world.
In contrast with this positive trend, it has been highlighted that the activities of this industry didn’t show much ambition to become more sustainable, although there is an increasing interest of tourists toward more sustainable service offers and a growing awareness of the impact of business practices on the environment. A strong driver of change has been the 2030 Agenda involving all the United Nations Member States to reach the 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and requiring the contribution of private actors as well.
However, it is usual to observe firms that still consider passively sustainability, limiting their actions to the introduction of environmental reporting, the use of green-speak in their communications, CSR isolated interventions or the mention of SDGs in the annual reports. Indeed, CSR is more rooted in the business world, because it is more connected to companies’ business goals, helping in increasing only profits. This interest of business companies in CSR sharpens the gap between the orientation towards shareholders’ profit and the more comprehensive societal responsibility. On the other side, it is not an effective way of operating to achieve sustainable objectives: it is not enough to add a little bit of corporate social responsibility in running the business, it is rather required to transform the strategy of the company and consequently define a radical new business model. Therefore, hoteliers should address sustainability from the strategy formulation until the final performance, aiming at achieving superior offerings for the purpose of replying to an increasing demand for sustainable services, not only to save costs, but also to satisfy the guest expectations and demands for the company image.
The Tourism and Hospitality industry is crucial for its direct impact on the natural system and on local communities, since it involves building infrastructures, roads and new constructions; therefore, in recent years a growing number of companies have recognised the potential competitive advantage achieved with the adoption of a more sustainable business model. The advantage is twofold: it can consist in a cost reduction achieved by putting in practice the different initiatives to reduce waste and consumption, and efficiently managing energy for example, but also it can be a differentiation advantage, since, through a Sustainable Business Model (SBM), the business is environmentally friendly and it is contributing to the improvement of the quality of life of the local community, as well as getting a better brand reputation, which will conquer the guests’ loyalty and achieve a long-term financial stability.
In particular, a business model is defined as “how the organization creates, delivers and captures value” (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010); it refers to how the key components are integrated to deliver value, how the parts are interconnected along the value chain and in the stakeholder networks and how through these interconnections the organization can create value and so profit.
Innovating the business model to reach sustainable goals is a hard challenge for the tourism and hospitality businesses, but meanwhile, it creates new opportunities and gives the chance to address the emerging global challenges of inequality, poverty, environmental degradation and climate change that would inevitably come to light.

According to (Scheyvens R., Hughes E., 2019) some studies, implementing a sustainable business model is a way to reduce the adverse externalities brought on by tourism in natural areas that drastically impact climate change’s risks; in addition, it contributes to the wellbeing of local communities enabling the achievement of SDG 1 (Eradication of poverty) and to the improvement of the working conditions with respect to SDG 8 (Decent work). Moreover, other authors (Winchenbach, A., Hanna, P., Miller, G., 2019) have deepened how a real sustainable business model integrates SDG 5 (Gender equality), SDG 6 (Clean water) and SDG 8 (Economic growth) in Tourism and Hospitality industry too. Such models play a key role in the social inclusion of local communities too, participating in the fulfilment of SDG 11 (Sustainable cities and communities) and of SDG 15 (Land use); indeed, tourism businesses are influenced by their geographical location, and according to it they can also give a different contribution to the SDG 13 (Climate change). These studies, which are connecting Tourism and Hospitality activities with the fulfilment of SDGs can be divided into two clusters: on a side those sustaining that the industry can enable the achievement of sustainable development (Boluk, K.A., Cavaliere, C.T., Duffy, L.N., 2019; Scheyvens R., Hughes E., 2019) and on the other side those believing that their strategies can withstand the negative effect caused by global warming (Scott, D., Hall, C.M., Gossling S., 2019).
The studies, mentioned in the previous paragraph, highlight the influence that sustainable business models of the industry can exercise on the overall society. It emerged that policymakers should do their part by encouraging the adoption of strategies oriented towards sustainable development, thus all the actors involved can be considered part of a co-evolutionary dynamic ecosystem where firms’ strategies, policies and society are interconnected.
To sum up, in order to shift to a sustainable business model, local communities and tourism enterprises’ collaboration is necessary to reduce the potential negative externalities that could be caused by stakeholders’ activities and promote the production of positive impacts, which are composed by all the positive outcomes affecting each of the stakeholders considered. The shift to sustainable business models is not just a strategy to be ethically and environmentally responsible, but a strategy to add value.
The concept of value has changed over time, going through the industrial revolution and the information revolution. Today the definition of value overcomes the traditional financial definition, recognizing as value the common good that is based on technology, intellectual property, innovation, cooperation, management skills, employees’ relationships, clients’ relationships, communities’ relationships, brand’s value. This definition was given by Kaplan and Norton (1992) when they introduced the Balanced Scorecard as the set of measures driving the performance. The final objective of the value creation is to maximize not only the financial capital, but the several typologies of capital involved in a business: the ecological (ecosystem and biodiversity’s protection), the social (local community’s protection), the solidaristic (disadvantaged categories’ support), the cultural (the instruments to allow every individual to establish himself), the ethical capital (correct behavior within the shared social agreement). Nevertheless, value was briefly defined also by Porter (2011) as all the benefits relative to costs, not just benefits alone, and this definition was used to explain the concept of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society, addressing its needs and challenges.
A Sustainable Business Model is focused on creating value over the long term, taking into account the point of view of the several relevant stakeholders affected by it and supporting the sustainable development not only of the company but of the overall society. A SBM is no more focused on the mere financial value creation, but it extends the value creation to the social and environmental areas impacting the company’s competitive advantage; moreover, since it considers the value created more widely for the customers, for the society and for meeting the SDGs, it’s a shared value.