The Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (SHA), a global industry network for the hospitality sector, has appointed tourism veteran Glenn Mandziuk as its new chief executive. He will start in April this year.
He replaces Madhu Rajesh, SHA’s founding CEO, who has moved into a new role as senior director, water and agriculture, at soft drinks firm The Coca-Cola Company.
SHA members include giants like Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International and Hilton Worldwide. In a press release, the group said that it covers 30 per cent of hotel rooms globally.
SHA, which was spun out of the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) as an independent charity in 2020, offers free tools to calculate water usage and the carbon footprint of hotels. It also works on issues like tackling human rights abuses and raising youth employment.
Mandziuk has over 25 years of experience in the tourism and hospitality sector. He was previously president and CEO of Canada’s Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association, and holds a Master of Environmental Design from the University of Calgary. He is currently a board director of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and the Responsible Tourism Institute.
“While the external environment remains challenging for the industry, the opportunities and urgency of the need to take significant and rapid steps to advance sustainable development globally have never been higher,” said Wolfgang Neumann, SHA’s chair, in a statement announcing the new CEO.
The hotel sector contributed to about 1 per cent of global emissions before the Covid-19 pandemic. Research has shown that the industry needs to reduce emissions by 66 per cent by 2030, and 90 per cent by 2050, to help limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
