How do you become a sustainable hotelier, Marc Traubel? (Pioneers of Sustainability - Interview Series)

As a sustainable hotelier, you are committed to the well-being of your guests and ensure that they can fully enjoy their vacation - without a guilty conscience. What makes someone choose this path? How does one become a sustainable hotelier? In this interview series entitled "Pioneers of Sustainability", Green Pearls® hoteliers answer this very question and share their thoughts on sustainability, the hotel business and their careers.

Today: Marc Traubel from the HUBERTUS Mountain Refugio Allgäu in Balderschwang

On Milestones and Continous Change

We join Marc Traubel in his office in the hotel's former gym. Laughing, he tells us that he was moved here when they needed the space in the shared office for other purposes. Behind him, a hiking backpack hangs on a coat rack. "The view to the south is sensational," he says, pointing his camera out the window and at the mountain opposite. In winter, however, he can't see anything, he explains – there are four or five metres of snow on the pile of wood in front of the window!

Green Pearls®: Hello Marc, thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

Marc Traubel: Yes, it would be my pleasure!

GP: How would you describe your hotel in the three words? 

Marc: We did a brand workshop a few years ago and the result was: powerful, clear, moving. Those were the three words we came up with after a long process. I can't say whether this process is still true today. I haven't thought about it for a long time. Powerful, clear, moving was already very good.

*He thinks for a moment*

• I'm going to say familiar. Familiar is something that fits us well.
• Individual. I hate standards.
• And unique in a certain way.

GP: How long have you been in the hotel business?

Marc: In the hotel business? I've been in the hotel business, or the hospitality business if you like, for over thirty years. If not even longer. When I was ten years old, I stood behind the bar for the first time, helped out in the cabin we had at that time. I started my apprenticeship about 25 years ago. And I have been in my parents' hotel for 12 years.

I was in various hotels, for example in Oberallgäu, where I did my apprenticeship, I was still allowed to join the German army at that time, I was in Lech for a winter season, I spent two years in the Black Forest, two years in Nuremberg. Then two years in Heidelberg, because I studied business administration there, then two years in Dubai and now for 12 years back in my parents' business.

GP: And have you been interested in sustainability in hotels from the very beginning?

Marc: Mei, when one says that they have lived and worked in Dubai ... You know how this city or this country works. You often have to close your eyes. What happens there, what resources are used here to try to bring in tourism once the oil resources have been used up ...

My father started very, very early to implement various technical possibilities in the property. And I'll put it bluntly: it was not to save electricity, but I would say that the predecessor of sustainability was simply saving money, being thrifty. In the past, people simply tried to conserve energy because it cost them money. Rooms were only heated as long as they were needed. Ventilation was all but switched off. There are many such details that used to be implemented from a different perspective. I know this from many, many hotels, where it was simply a question of money. And now the whole concept is presented as sustainable. But I think many hoteliers have been working on this for a long time and are looking at how they can work efficiently. Now it's about saving resources, in the past it was about saving money.

Sustainability is reflection

GP: Was there a key moment for you when the decision was made to turn the HUBERTUS into a sustainable hotel? 

Marc: It happened gradually and over many stages. I mean, we have had a pellet heating system for twelve years, but at the same time we still had an oil heating system for ten years. We decided to do away with it two years ago. But that was a decision that had nothing to do with sustainability. The heating was good and what would have been the advantage of tearing it out? It was a fail-safe, we needed it five times a year. 

I'll be honest, Greta Thunberg simply made a lot of people think with her ideas. And us, too: Do we need this, do we need that, do we tear that out? There was never a clear-cut moment, never a big bang. Often there were simply realizations.

We live in the middle of the mountain world. Nature determines our lives, shapes our lives. And it always has. Of course, this plays a role in certain decisions. Especially now after the avalanche, nature, in both a positive and negative sense, is even more present in our minds. We have literally learned that you have to respect it. And then, of course, we incorporated that into the new construction of the Mountain Spring Spa. If not now, when?

But also in the culinary field, we have long focused on regionality. For example with our meat. The pigs, the calves and cattle. I don't know if that's part of it, but for me it certainly is. We have many, many of our own pigs that have been down by the stream for many years. So we simply show the guests the rhythm of life. The pigs are down there now, they are fed over the summer, they have a good life and then at some point they end up on our barbecue.

Whether you call it environmental education, sustainability or I don't know what, but a change in mind has taken place very smoothly.

Mile Stones, Avalanches and History

GP: Could you briefly describe your evolution in three or four milestones?

Marc: Briefly in terms of history: The building we are sitting in right now, the original building, will be a hundred years old next year. And my grandparents bought it 71 years ago. Why my grandparents came here back then is not really known. But something must have kept them in this place. 

Perhaps that year alone, 1951, on the first of August, that step into independence in Balderschwang is a big milestone.

What is a second milestone or a special moment is when my grandfather died quite suddenly in 1980. My uncle and my father came back, leased the business from my grandmother and shortly afterwards realised that all three in one place was one too many. So we leased a second business as well.

Maybe that was the transition: the death of grandpa and passing on to the next generation, because they had to and because they had to fight. That was a second big step in the development of this hotel.

A third major milestone came about 22 years later when the topic of wellness popped up. The Traubel lads, as they were called, simply dared to enter the wellness hotel business. My mother trained as a pharmacist and naturopath, so we brought things like wellness, Ayurveda and yoga into the hotel. In a time twenty years ago when some hotels had saunas the size of telephone booths!

A very, very drastic event, which was not planned, however, was the avalanche that hit us on January 19, 2019 and destroyed our spa from which we have always said it is our core. And which we then completely rebuilt again.

It does not take much to become a sustainable hotelier

GP: What do you think it takes to be a sustainable hotelier? Or to put it another way: How does one become a sustainable hotelier?

Marc: Common sense. That's the be-all and end-all. Sustainability in the hotel industry stands, I would say, on two major pillars. Firstly, the food: where does it come from, how are the animals kept? That's very, very important. It just can't be that a kilo of pork fillet costs 5 euros. That's not possible, that can only be sh*t. Sorry for the honesty.  

We have switched to organic for most of the food and we also have very, very many local suppliers of pork, beef and chicken. If you just try to avoid the big suppliers, including big cash-and-carry markets, every now and then, and buy directly from the producer, it's not that much more expensive. Sometimes it’s a hassle to process stuff like that. But it just doesn't cost that much more.

And second is the matter of generating energy, generating energy and making sense of it all. It's not enough to say: Okay, I'll put two liquid gas CHP units here and add two peak load pellet boilers. I'm a big technology freak who is always trying things out in order to increase the efficiency of the systems as much as possible. So, you need somewhat of a technical fascination with it as well.

GP: Putting it into perspective: What would a successor need to bring? What would you wish?

Marc: Well, first of all I hope that my successor will not come for many decades. What will change by then, I can't say yet. It's really difficult. They should be friendly and bring common sense, logical thinking. They can learn the rest. But a personal, positive attitude and logical common sense – that simply has to be brought with them.

GP: What do you wish for the future?

Marc: So, in a way, we all have to rethink. A hotel of our size, no matter how it is heated, is a luxury property. You don't need a pool. You don't need four saunas. You don't need a hotel room heated to 30 degrees. This is a luxury item. And we hoteliers have an educational responsibility and have to try to pass this on to our guests somehow with common sense. That's something that's also close to my heart.

There are always bad days, but there are always good days. I got a letter from a woman at the very beginning of the pandemic. She sent me the story of a king and an adviser. The counselor said: "Man, dear king, I'll give you a note. You hide it somewhere. If you're feeling really down, you pull out the paper and read what's on it. And even if you're doing really, really well, you take out the same piece of paper and read what's on it." And it said: “This too shall pass.”

So, when you're feeling really sh*tty, when you're heartbroken, when an avalanche hits you... That too will pass. And when you ride the wave of your success, like last year, when we had the best summer in our history, we made sales and worked like anything else... That, too, will pass.

And I can't change the past anymore. So, I stop thinking about it and look ahead and into the now. What can I change now?

It keeps going, the earth will keep turning. Don't always dwell on the past. There are memories that are good or bad. But I don't need to get upset about it anymore because it's over.

GP: I thank you for your time and the beautiful closing words.

About the HUBERTUS Mountain Refugio

Located in the smallest town in Germany, surrounded by the mountains of the Allgäu Alps and characterized by the architecture of a unique building: the HUBERTUS Mountain Refugio Allgäu has a lot to offer. The heart of the hotel is the Mountain Spring Spa, which was recent re-built following an avalanche disaster. The striking architecture of the building, which is framed by several bodies of water, invites you to relax and just feel good. And the holistic life concept of the hotel includes more than just wellness: guests can look forward to cosy rooms, culinary delights and exciting active offers.

Pioneers of sustainability at Green Pearls®

Under this title, various hoteliers and hosts will have their say in the near future, sharing their thoughts on sustainability and reporting on their careers. The interview series is ongoing and will be published every five to six weeks. Look forward to the third part of the series, coming in early 2023.

Read the first part of the series with Marion Muller from Lifestylehotel SAND here.