Regeneration + Hospitality - A Natural Fit!

When asked, what does it mean to be truly regenerative? the response is best made by asking two other questions: what does it mean to be and feel truly alive? or as we asked in Flanders, what does it mean or feel to flourish? The answer to all three questions is the same. Our entire beings are designed to seek and experience aliveness. All life clings to life. And as the famous ecologist Lynne Margulis observed and biomimicist Janine Benyus affirmed: ?"Life is that which creates the conditions for life to thrive"

?People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” Joseph Campbell

Feeling that rapture, fully actualising the potential of a regenerative way of seeing, being and doing requires an investment of our attention and the application of our entire selves and faculties; our hearts and emotions; our bodies and their amazing capacity to sense and experience; our souls and our spiritual powers to know, intuit and connect; and both sides of our very underutilised brains and multiple intelligences to understand and imagine.

Regeneration is not a thing that can be defined but is a state of being, a process of flourishing, becoming, and evolving. To regenerate is the same as to revitalise - to bring back to life that which was ailing in some way. It's a verb not a noun.

Because regeneration addresses a state of aliveness it can only pertain to living beings NOT dead, inanimate machines or parts of machines.

Regeneration is made possible by changing our perception or perspective. From seeing our universe as a complex machine with an infinite number of separate parts to a whole living system of a virtually infinite number of inter-connected, entangled systems.

To repeat, regeneration is a new and powerful concept that involves a fundamental change of perspective that sees life as a set of living systems nested within other living systems instead of parts of a machine. This new perspective takes some getting used to as, when applied, it affects virtually every aspect of our lives and relationships and is informed by a combination of ancient knowledge (stewarded by indigenous peoples and spiritual sages) and cutting-edge science. It's no small topic as it involves an investigation into the nature and purpose of life itself!!

This artIcle considers five reasons why regenerative concepts and approaches are ideally suited to the hospitality sector - not as an incremental modification to a sustainable model but as a more powerful mutation capable of real transformation.

1. Hospitality and Regeneration have core values in common- both are about caring

Hospitality is one of the oldest rituals in human evolution throughout all geographies. Humanity developed first in small and scattered groups spreading out over long distances. ?The extension of hospitality - ??the offer of a caring welcome to a stranger involves both a conscious choice and an innate recognition of shared vulnerability and inter-dependence.? As such, hospitality is likely one of humanity's earliest cultural traditions.

?By sharing food and shelter and treating the stranger as a guest, the host literally breathes life and vitality into the guest - that's a personal form of regeneration! When the guest shares tales of their home with their host, the latter's perspective is broadened and life enriched; when travellers return home, sharing stories of their adventures, that knowledge and awareness of informs and enhances their friends and family - that's a collective form of regeneration! One might even imagine that tourism is a form of pollination...

?Regeneration means bringing the Earth back to life,” says Hawken. “And when you bring the Earth back to life, you bring yourself back to life. You bring your family and friends back to life.” Paul Hawken

?Thus, the deeper cause or purpose of travel and hospitality is to heal, or to make whole, or to enliven. It’s no coincidence that the words hospice, hospital and hospitality have the same etymological root.

?The word recreation is virtually synonymous with the concept of rejuvenation meaning to recreate some sense of balance, order, purpose and meaning where they have disappeared. The word holiday comes from “holy day” and the notion that, if the balance was to be restored in the human psyche, there needed to be a day (the Sabbath or Sunday) or days (festivals) when the spiritual aspect of one’s being was honoured and nurtured.

?Even the word vacation, which comes from the Latin verb vacare – to empty – suggests the need to empty oneself to make room for fresh ideas. And isn’t this what most hospitality providers know is their role in life – especially those operating a resort or boutique hotel or B & B within driving distance of a bustling metropolis? Thinking and acting regeneratively requires us to see and work holistically in contrast to the dominant paradigm which involves reducing wholes to fragmented parts. Taking a holistic perspective requires seeing both the relationships and spaces between parts and can act as an antidote the harmful fragmentation that comes from a need to define, separate compare and judge.

2. The Nature of the Exchange is an Encounter

At the core of hospitality is an encounter, some might say, a sacred encounter between a guest and host that can be mutually reciprocal i.e., benefitting both parties, and symbiotic in nature.

Encounter is the act of recognising something - a planet, a woodland, a person,? It is the acknowledgement that there is something there that has the gift of life, self, soul and the ability to surprise. Stephen Harding, Animal Ecologist.

?Note: the word recognise, like the word regeneration and remember imply some form of repeat. In the case of recognise, the process involves a revealing of something that was always there but not previously seen.

?Sadly, the materialist, reductionist paradigm associated with industrial processes that dominate life and commerce today has commodified this encounter and denigrated it to a financial exchange. Thanks in part to automation, the transaction has for many become sterile and lifeless. Many parts of our contemporary travel experience involve encounters between humans and machines (robots, kiosks, algorithms) Yet the human-to-human encounter can involve a depth and breadth of exchange that can have transformative effects on giver and receiver: a nourishing meal (meal) and? a comfortable place to rest and recuperate (shelter) are core but can be supplemented and enhanced with conviviality, fresh experiences, learning, nature, and culture. An encounter deemed as meaningful by the participants will likely appeal to and enliven all four aspects of being a human: our physicality and need for nourishing succour; our emotional selves and need for companionship and a felt sense of belonging; our need for beauty and aesthetics and our spiritual capacity for wonder, awe and being part of something bigger than our individual selves. In this key TED talk, hotelier Marc Harmon talks about the Soul of a Hotel

Video link ?

When you have an unexpected encounter with a wild creature, the encounter can be both transformative and highly meaningful as described by Stephen Harding when he stared into the eyes a muntjac deer - a species he had been studying intellectually for his Phd. thesis but, until the moment recorded in the video, he had never fully seen, never really recognised.

Link to Video Encountering Another Being

3. Regeneration Enriches and Expands the Purpose of Hospitality.

In the existing industrial paradigm, the primary purpose of a hospitality enterprise is to make a profiit and the purpose of the sector is to contribute to GDP by extracting value from the exchange with the guest. Success is measured in terms of their absolute number (trips, covers, night stays) and material value (ADR, contribution to GDP etc.) and increase in number.

Since the emergence of concepts such as Conscious Capitalism, Business For Good, and the rise of BCorps, there is a growing recognition that a business can be more profitable by seeing its higher, primary purpose and role as contributing to the thriving of people, places and a just more equitable society. As Paul Polman has articulated in Net Positive Business and the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance has recognised in its latest strategy, truly successful businesses and those demonstrating greater resilience are those that contribute to the well-being of their community.

The rationale for this comes from our understanding of how living systems work - parts of a living system are also living systems nested within larger systems e.g., the cells in our body are parts of organs that are parts of the larger body of an individual. Health occurs when each system contributes to the health of the whole. Each hotel or restaurant is a living system within a larger place-based and shaped community. The health of the individual business depends on the health and vitality of the community and community-wide health depends on the health and vitality of its parts. All systems are interdependent and entangled. Hospitality-related enterprises have a key role to play within communities as connecting agents and stewards of health and wellbeing in social, cultural, biophysical and economic terms.

?Furthermore, we now understand that the purpose of life is actually to evolve - to become more complex, beautiful and harmonious. In this context, the purpose of a hospitality business or the sector itself is not simply to expand but to evolve, to grow and develop by providing opportunities for its employees and the communities in which it operates, to actualise their potential, develop and mature.

4. The Hospitality Sector is a complex network not a compartmentalised industry.

The most articulate proponent of living systems, Fritjof Capra has shown that Life organizes itself in networks. This concept actually contains two ideas. One is that the network is the basic pattern of organization of all living systems. And two, that life organizes itself. In other words, the network pattern is not imposed by the environment, but is created by the system itself.?

?This observation is directly relevant to tourism and hospitality which operates like a network but which still conceives and describes itself as some form of vertically and horizontally integrated industry comprising linear value chains. (see diagram below).

This is why top-down attempts at control and management haven't worked. Dynamic living, networked systems cannot not be directed. Change comes from within. Effective, functioning networks require a diversity of participants and connections and the free flow of information, resources and insights between members.?

In a living network, hospitality sector plays a critically important role in enabling people to meet, connect and exchange. Hotels and restaurants often act as hubs (meeting points). Each host is a self-organising entity, a singularity in the network who acts in response to his or her personal and corporate needs and in response the larger system of which it is a part. ?As a consequence, the hospitality network, as a collection of hosts, is constantly in movement.

5. Regenerative Hospitality involves place-shaped living networks populated by hosts who care.

The hosts who provide hospitality-related services are rooted in places as the customer travels to the host provider and not the other way around.? While the principles associated with regeneration may be generic (see for example Carol Sanford' s 7 Principles of Living Systems, and Biomimicry's 6 Nature's principles) they manifest differently according to place and context.

?Each place is unique and hospitality providers have both an opportunity and an obligation to express and share that uniqueness in so many ways - cuisine, service, building design, expressions of history, ritual, traditions etc. ie to tell and share the unique Story of a Place. They also have a vested interest in becoming active stewards and custodians of the places they inhabit and connecting its inhabitant-residents in ways that unleash that caring capacity needed to sustain its unique identity and quality. For most hosts (especially small enterprises) these places are home. It's in each unique place that hoteliers and restauranteurs have the chance to become change agents, ambassadors, connecting agents, and custodians - all activities that can help both their business and community thrive. Because hosts often stay in a place many years, they can discern patterns and continuities over time.

Once we "see" hospitality as a living network, we will be ready to learn from life itself. Every life form, every member of the network, has a unique essence and the potential to develop, grow qualitatively and to evolve. ?Fritjof Capra has recently identified four characteristics of living networks.

• networks are the basic pattern of organization of all living systems;
• all networks (i.e. life) are inherently regenerative. When regeneration stops, life stops;
• life is inherently creative; and
• life is inherently intelligent.

Instead of seeing themselves as lone individuals, participants in the network will realise there is more to gain by respecting and nourishing the community of people who directly and indirectly contribute to the success of their individual operation. They will look to nature to see how ecosystems and indigenous communities regenerate themselves through reciprocal flows of nutrients, information, and waste.

?In her article Leadership in an Age of Complexity , Margaret Wheatley suggested we need fewer hosts acting like heroes and more who act like hosts who convene conversations that matter by attracting a diversity of participants around a shared table. The skills required to host a successful event happen to be very similar to the skills needed to host a community:

• Humility - the host knows he/she can't act alone
• Curiosity - who has the skills and "know how" required
• Confidence - confidence in the capability of community members
• Creativity - can inspire others to imagne a desired future
• Inclusive - can create a shared sense of ownership and belongong among diverse groups
• Alchemist - can create and hold dpace for magic (emergence) to occur
• Excellent listeners and connectors
• Really C.A.R.E - ie are considerate, attentive, responsive and empathic.

In a living system no one system can act alone or exclusively in its own self-interest.? ?Our present model of reductionism, with its false sense of separation has resulted in evermore specialisation of knowledge, function and expertise, and a belief that each sector must fight to protect its interests. The tourism and hospitality sector like many others currently tends to look inward and focus on its own issues without due attention to context.?

The phenomenon of tourism cannot be managed in isolation. By seeing tourism as a contributor to a larger sense of community well-being it breaks down the silos and accesses support, ideas and expertise that enrich the hospitality business /sector while enriching the quality of life and capacity to thrive in the other sectors on which it depends. Within a living systems perspective, the purpose of any entity is never to expand for its own sake but to grow its capacity to contribute to the health of the whole. A regenerative hotel increases its net worth, its "wellth," and resilience by contributing to the health of the community not extracting value.

Finally, let's not forget that, if you're reading this, then you are alive and you wouldn't be here if some of nature's most pervasive and basic of organisms hadn't created one of the most productive relationships based on reciprocal generosity - fungi and algae could teach us all a thing or two! To re-experience a sense of wonder and awe at nature's intelligence and begin to think like a living system, then watch this brilliant animation:

Watch animation click