78125A sustainable future for hospitality through inclusive digital mentoringClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKThe hospitality industry in the UK and around the globe has been devastated by Covid-19 and faces years of reduced demand caused by the immediate pandemic as well as sustained moves to digital working and reduced levels of travel directly resulting from it. Hospitality businesses can only survive the pandemic by adapting and finding new sources of revenues, significantly cutting costs and improving sustainability and efficiency, and our innovation is aimed at the recovery of hospitality and travel, with a focus on environmental sustainability. Mentoring - the exchange of experience and development of ideas - should play a leading role. The technology and solutions to support the hospitality recovery already exist, but require access to a leader's experience, or new technologies and the vast majority of the workforce in the UK largely lacks these skills today, as experiences cannot be easily shared, and training cannot easily be accessed. The Growth Works Network is a fully digital mentoring network open to every hospitality professional in the UK and globally, a new innovative platform for accommodation providers, hospitality technology companies and universities. The community comes together to learn, network, share ideas and develop solutions to the crisis, wherever they are based, helping the UK hospitality industry take a lead on the global innovation opportunities in the travel industry. The project will have at its core a focus on efficient and sustainable recovery from the crisis, both reducing costs for hotels while improving their environmental sustainability and improving their effect on the climate. Discussions focus on 'sustainable competencies', those areas of the business where resources can be saved and waste carefully managed - from paperwork; energy; water, and further areas, as well as understanding where technology can best be applied. The solution exists today as a service, and is popular with users and organisations in trial. This project will convert this service into an improved, innovative online platform. We adapted our hotel consulting business in March, in the face of a fall in demand for our services, to respond to the crisis and set up The Growth Works Network. Our community of 100+ hoteliers discuss sustainable solutions, but the offering requires human management and support, slowing growth and making pricing less accessible. The next phase of growth, to access the addressable market of 3.2m hospitality workers in the UK, plus 100s of universities with hospitality students and alumni & hotel chains, is to develop an online platform where mentees and mentors come together, exchange and develop sustainable solutions for the COVID-19 recovery. The community is open to everyone and fully inclusive, regardless of education and experience level, or nationality and background. We maintain this equality by remaining free to individuals to receive mentorship, and charging only larger institutions like universities and hotel companies. All this is done with no physical travel, reducing the environmental impact - connecting hotel professionals across the UK and around the world with leaders with field experience, and businesses that are at the cutting edge of sustainable hospitality innovation.