Last year allowed us to rethink our company and our ideas. At first, we felt forced by the Covid outbreak, the impact on ourselves, our environment, and our company. During the summer, peace returned. It turned out that the concept we offer with our company would not be affected. The demand for our nature experiences, each in its bubble, small-scale and using local resources, has only grown.
During the hustle and bustle, through conversations with guests, research and coaches, we developed a new concept, which we will present at the beginning of the summer. One thing is sure: we embrace the sustainability criteria of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and use those criteria as a framework to develop into a more social and sustainable company.
GSTC criteria for hotels and accommodation are an interpretation of the global goals of the Agenda 2030, specifically focused on tourism which makes it possible to measure this industry against the global goals set for the year 2030. The results provide insight, shows progress and shortcomings, an essential input for our business plan and annual action plan.
Last autumn, we had a baseline measurement carried out by Visit Dalarna. In short, it came down to that we have started an incredible journey and that we should not forget to focus on registration, communication and reporting.
With this blog, we want to pay attention to reporting our social sustainability of the year 2020.
Development project for the village and helping hands for local companies
Last three years, we were part of a group to improve our village’s commercial services, cooperate more, and develop together (LEA and HUB project with Coompanion). It resulted in a bundle of summer activities to tourists by our locals and plodded a seed for further development. Besides, we have worked with helping hands for small businesses in the village, practical but also brainstorming and steering towards more cooperation. Together this amounts to an annual deployment of 300 hours
Giveaways
Human well-being is essential to us too. What we can offer people is recuperation by regaining energy, rest, fresh air and inspiration. Sometimes we give away a night to a local initiative, a contest or another good cause we like. Last year, we gave away a stay at our place to a local lottery, a group of heroes we felt really deserved: health workers and the village Christmas decoration contest winner. We delivered in 2020: four nights in the Supermåne, two nights at the whole farm and a specially designed Ore bag.
Local procurement
Living and working in the countryside has its advantages and disadvantages. It is beautiful, and we are in our own bubble, but we also have to do our best to maintain, improve and increase the product offering and services. We support this by purchasing products and services as locally as possible; of course, we do not compromise quality. We have not (yet) established an exact definition and kept a measurement, but our gut feeling says that we purchase 75% local products and services with a local preference in the village.
Students
Finally, we believe in giving (young) people, students, starters and small creative companies a chance. In the last part of 2020, we worked with two students from Högskolan Dalarna on new ideas. A solid win-win cooperation. We need facts and the latest developments based plans by students with a unique view of the world to survive and realize projects, and they need a challenging assignment.
Action plan 2021
At the moment, we work on our action plan for 2021. We will mainly continue what we already do and focus more on the organization and structure of becoming a social company. Students will again play a role in this. We have a couple of students from the Yrkes Akademin helping us out right now to underpin and develop our new concept (about which we will talk more later this year). Local cooperation and offering helping hands is also a stayer. We need the village to flourish so we can flourish.