Novotel, a chain of nearly 600 hotels across the globe, recently developed Sustainable Seafood Principles in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that include a commitment to sourcing greater quantities of sustainable seafood.
Novotel’s new guidelines include banning the sourcing of 350 endangered seafood species and actions to promote responsible fishing by 2027.
The chain said in a release that the wild-caught seafood it serves will solely consist of Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified species or responsibly sourced local fish, and the farmed species it uses will comprise Aquaculture Stewardship Council- or organic-certified salmon and shrimp, “fostering supplier collaboration where needed.”
The effort is being led by WWF France, which in addition to guiding the development of the principles, has created a Sustainable Seafood Training program, in which Novotel chefs, as well as food procurement teams, can receive training on sourcing and cooking sustainable food. WWF is also working alongside Novotel and parent company Accor to improve their traceability protocols.
Through WWF’s guidance and expertise, Novotel can “drive change at scale across our 600 hotels and more widely across the industry and communities we reach,” Novotel Global Brand President Jean-Yves Minet said.
“At Novotel, we’re committed to making it easier to make choices that have a positive impact on the longevity of the planet, on marine life, and on future generations. Our ocean impact strategy is designed to drive real change,” he said.
Furthering its commitment to ocean sustainability, Issy-les-Moulineaux, France-based Accor also recently launched the Ocean Tourism Pact at the United Nations Ocean Conference in June. The pact is a collective commitment to build sustainable coastal ecosystems and boost marine tourism, or “blue tourism,” in the areas in which it operates, the company said.
The pact also accelerates “the setting and implementation of commitments aimed at driving the net-zero and sustainable transition of the tourism sector,” according to Accor, which used the Glasgow Declaration Initiative on Climate Action in Tourism and the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative as reference points in framing the pact.
The partnership between Novotel and WWF is a three-year agreement aimed at protecting the well-being and longevity of the world’s oceans. The release of the principles occurred on the first anniversary of the partnership and builds upon the actions already taken throughout the first year of the collaboration, which have included sponsoring fishery improvement projects, reducing single-use plastics and food waste, and helping to fund WWF projects across the globe, among others.
