Sustainable guest management
Can you still justify flying guests in from all over the world? Do you need to make choices about who you can and can’t invite, and should you consider compensating for flights? Or maybe the solution lies in green hotels or electric car services? If you run a film festival, you’ve probably discussed sustainable guest management. It’s not an easy subject to tackle, since you want to protect your budget, your festival’s integrity and theme, as well as the environment. Luckily, you don’t always have to tackle this on your own. Here’s how some of our clients approach sustainable guest management and the solutions they’ve found to work for them.
Film Fest Hamburg forgoes flowers and offers sustainable gifts or donations instead
Claudia Jäger is Head of Guest Service at Film Fest Hamburg. As part of that role, she also has to make choices about sustainability. These are the four main categories she focuses on:
- Sustainable Travel: “Whenever possible, we invite guests to attend the festival in person, primarily film directors from around the world. Guests travelling from within Germany arrive by train. Many of our European guests also choose rail travel, particularly those from neighbouring countries. For guests coming from outside Europe, we usually combine their visit with other international festival appearances to reduce long-haul travel.”
- Emission-Free Local Transport: “All transport within the festival to meetings, premieres, and official dinners is provided by MOIA. The fleet is fully electric and operates with zero local emissions.”
- Sustainable Accommodation: “Our festival hotel serves as the central meeting point for all guests and is located within walking distance of cinemas and event venues. The hotel is officially certified for its sustainability standards.”
- Conscious Use of Materials & Social Responsibility: “Instead of conventional gifts, we present our guests with sustainable items made from tarpaulins used at the festival the previous year. Following Q&A sessions, we forego flowers and instead make a donation on behalf of the film to the Afghan Women’s Association.”
MOOOV film festival opts exclusively for digital Q&A’s
Greet Stevens is the business manager at MOOOV film festival and thus has a wide range of responsibilities. MOOOV places a strong emphasis on sustainability throughout the entire film festival. When we asked her specifically about sustainable guest management, she said:
“When we were forced to organise an online festival with online Q&As during the COVID period, it turned out that directors appreciated this kind of online conversation as well. Directors travel halfway around the world with their films, which means they’re away from home frequently and for long periods, each time being present at Festival A for only two or three days before moving on to Festival B. This has a major impact on their private lives, as well as on the climate and a festival’s budget.
For all those reasons, MOOOV has now chosen to opt exclusively for digital Q&As. Only guests from Belgium and neighbouring countries are still invited, as the impact on the climate and the budget is significantly lower. We encourage travel by train, and for travel between our festival locations, we enlist volunteers to transport guests using a shared car service.”
Netherlands Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam set clear goals
A sustainability approach within the organization is a great start, but a good addition is communicating to the outside world as well. By communicating them to your audience, partners and peers you can set expectations and inspire others with your solutions. The Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) is one of many examples. NFF communicates about their hybrid car service during the film festival and also states:
“We encourage staff and partners to use public transport to reduce car use. For our small group of international guests, we also encourage train travel. (…) For overnight stays, we partner with StayOkay, which has an active sustainability policy, the Golden Green Key hotel Mitland, and Crowne Plaza, which uses the IHG Green Engage system to protect the environment for today’s guests – and for the future.”
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has the clearest set goals we’ve seen so far. IFFR created an entire timeline with percentages to set out their sustainability goals and they list the goals they’ve already achieved! A small excerpt:
“By 2026, we want to:
- Have fossil free transport (within Rotterdam) by IFFR
- All merch made out of fully circular or recycled materials
- Reduce flights within Europe by 30% (in relation to 2024)
By 2027, we want to:
- Produce zero food waste
- Reduce flights within Europe by 40% (in relation to 2024)”
The making of a sustainability certificate
In addition to our clients, we also stay informed about advances in the field. When it comes to sustainable guest management but also sustainability in the broader sense. Movies that Matter states on their website that they’re working on a general framework to help film festivals in their sustainability goals: “Together with film festivals CineKid, IDFA, IFFR, and NFF, we are working on developing a certification for film festivals that defines what it means to be a sustainable film festival. We aim to demonstrate what is required to truly make a difference and to help make the entire film festival sector greener and fairer.”
Add a sustainable software solution
Guest management isn’t the only department that significantly impacts a film festival’s sustainability. You can make a difference by carefully choosing catering and suppliers, focusing on recycling any used materials, and avoiding paper catalogues or tickets.
But there’s also your software to consider. We understand that our business operations also contribute to environmental impact, and we take this responsibility seriously. We strive to minimise our carbon footprint by implementing sustainable practices throughout our own office, the whole organisation and the software we offer our clients:
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We invest in the development of new data structures and functionalities to give festivals the opportunity to work in a more digital way. This results in a significant decrease in the use of paper and printers, transport of objects (virtual distribution) and transport of people (online industry events).
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We have taken steps to reduce our energy consumption by adopting energy-efficient technologies in our data centres and office, such as energy-efficient servers and LED lighting
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Fiona’s applications are hosted green, its data center is rated with 1,15 PUE – see https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/)
Read more about our efforts on sustainability or get in touch if you want to hear more about Fiona Festival!
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Who is Fiona?
At Fiona, we love tech and film festivals. That is why our film festival clients love Fiona’s film festival management software: designed to be effective, user-friendly, and easy to use. We are constantly adding new features and learning from our trusted film festival partners. Meanwhile, we stay updated on new technologies to keep Fiona the best film festival management software.
