Sircle Collection Hotels: Sustainability Strategy
The Challenge
Sircle Collection operates 13 hotels and 26 restaurants and bars across the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Austria. In-house restaurants and bars play a large role in their services, encouraging continual innovation and inspiring new approaches to hospitality.
Sircle recognized years ago that sustainability was becoming critical in hospitality and had begun their journey. They take on various roles in local communities, from responsible employment and food procurement to waste management and supply chain impact reduction. However, their existing sustainability guidelines were not yet organization-wide. Each property operated somewhat independently, making it difficult to measure collective impact or set coherent targets. The challenge was to determine shared values, develop principles, and provide holistic goals that would move the entire collection forward together.
Applying SiD
Except used the Symbiosis in Development (SiD) framework to develop an organization-wide sustainability strategy. The project involved site visits and brainstorming sessions with Sircle Collection to gain insight and guidance from all decision makers across the organization.
This collaborative approach is fundamental to SiD. Not only does it build a deeper understanding of current operations and capabilities, it helps modify and redesign structures over time. The collaboration can be challenging when multiple properties across multiple countries need to align, but that is precisely what SiD's facilitated process helps achieve.
With a strategy and goals in place, Sircle Collection can independently develop roadmaps and transitions for the next 5 to 15 years, supported with smart supply chain management and an increasingly positive footprint. The framework offers opportunities for realignment and innovation across operations, real estate, partnerships, and investments.
Outcomes
The project delivered two core documents:
Guideline Structure
A comprehensive document organizing sustainability improvements across three categories: asset operation, asset development, and company management. This provides starting points for structure, content, and modification of guidelines across the organization. Each team within Sircle develops their own unique policies and action points within this framework, ensuring local relevance while maintaining organizational coherence.
Sustainability Manifesto
Built on the guidelines using SiD's integrated systems thinking, this document presents Sircle's sustainability vision along with a set of pillars and five golden rules. It focuses on realizing systemic and holistic impacts on society, guiding efforts to influence change not only in Sircle's own operations but across the wider hospitality industry, supply chains, and community.
Connecting Rooms Podcast
The travel and hospitality sectors were among the hardest hit during COVID-19, prompting a reimagining of what the industry could become. Sircle Collection began the Connecting Rooms podcast to engage with experts from diverse industries, from sustainability to art and design.
Except's director Tom Bosschaert appeared on the show to discuss reframing sustainability and why it matters for the hospitality sector: moving beyond checklists and certifications toward genuinely systemic change in how hotels and restaurants operate within their communities and supply chains.
Key SiD Methods Used
- SiD integrated systems thinking for cross-portfolio strategy
- ELSI framework connecting sustainability domains to hotel operations
- Stakeholder co-creation across multiple properties and countries
- Guideline development as scalable organizational tool