By Sarah George,Travelodge

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Hospitality is a unique industry. It’s part construction, part food and beverage, part logistics and energy management. It employs 3.5 million people in the UK and provides everything from first jobs through to routes into leadership. It is the number one provider of employment to under 25s, part time workers and non-graduates. At its heart, it’s about people.

Every day at Travelodge, our 13,000 colleagues bring our hotels to life in communities across the UK, welcoming more than 22 million customers each year. That’s why, for us, sustainability has always been broader than environmental impact and carbon emissions. It’s also about social sustainability and mobility, creating good jobs, supporting wellbeing and inclusion, and helping people grow and thrive in the workplace.

As a people-first business, we’re focused on removing barriers, opening up progression and making Travelodge a place where everyone can thrive. When Lynn, one of our long-serving hotel team colleagues, heard about our new flexible working initiative, she told us it had helped her rethink her plans to retire. Being able to move into a part-time hotel manager role meant she could stay with the team she loved, while also making time for other priorities.

This is a small example, but it says a lot about what sustainability really means in hospitality. It’s not just about the planet. It’s about people.

Sustainability that runs through everything

At Travelodge, we’re still early in our sustainability journey, and we don’t pretend to have all the answers. We know sustainability can’t sit on the side of the business; it has to run through everything we do and that means thinking differently about how we operate, how we support our people, and how we work with partners and customers.

Our Better Future plan is underpinned by three core pillars – Inclusive, Caring and Conscious – and this year we have made good progress in all three. For our colleagues, we have expanded flexible career opportunities and opened new routes into leadership, helping to ensure we are accessible and inclusive to all.

As part of our journey, that means learning, evolving and being honest about where we are, while staying ambitious about where we’re heading. We’re making solid progress against our strategy but we know we have to keep moving forward.

Hospitality as a sector has a really young demographic, with nearly 39% of the hospitality workforce aged between 16–24, the highest proportion of that age group among UK industries. However, over 165,000 workers aged 50 and over have also joined the UK hospitality sector over the past three years. This makes it an incredibly diverse workforce. Employers like us need to be able to offer flexibility, progression and development to a wide population of colleagues with varied backgrounds, experience and circumstances.

Over the last few years, we’ve looked at ways to innovate and be proactive in how we can support our colleagues of all ages, backgrounds and ability. We re-launched our in-house management development program, Aspire, back in 2021 and since then, more than 1,000 colleagues have taken part each year.

We know it’s also about making recruitment fair, inclusive and open, so all of our job adverts include clear recruitment processes and salary details. We ensure fair employment by offering contracts that reflect actual working hours, with no zero-hours contracts, and we offer flexibility and work life balance by making part-time management roles available.

Progress, not perfection

According to UKHospitality, the sector is the country’s leading socially productive industry, driving social mobility by creating opportunities for people from all backgrounds. This includes people with disabilities and those without degrees or from non-professional families.

While roles in hospitality are often perceived as short-term, our industry is using apprenticeships and in-house training to help people pursue long-term careers and advancement, whilst also offering flexibility, so they can progress their career ambitions alongside their personal commitments, at a time that’s right for them.

With its wide geographical reach, flexible shift patterns and lower entry requirements, hospitality can offer progression based on potential rather than background, with employees often gaining experience across different roles and developing new skills.

By employing people from local communities, hospitality not only helps support regional growth, particularly in disadvantaged areas, it also helps in creating long-term career opportunities for people who may have struggled to find them otherwise.

At Travelodge, we’re also taking steps to ensure our people are supported to succeed. We’ve rethought how we recruit, train, and promote. We’ve built in more flexibility, opened up new career paths, and worked to remove barriers for people who may have been excluded from work, offering internal development programmes and contracts that work around family and caring responsibilities.

Our partnership with the Purpose Coalition continues to challenge and guide us on social mobility and community impact.

A long-term commitment

The truth is, our work on sustainability — whether that’s social or environmental — is never truly done. We’re still learning and figuring things out, but we’re committed to getting better every day.

Addressing social challenges, such as promoting diversity and inclusion, requires collective action across the entire industry. The government’s Hospitality Council and the work driven by UKHospitality is helping to recognise diversity and inclusion, but it’s an ongoing process for all of us across the sector.

What we do know now is that by focusing on our people, we’re not just building a stronger Travelodge; we’re also helping to build a more resilient and inclusive hospitality industry for everyone, which also benefits local communities.

We’re excited for what’s next on this journey, and we’re proud to be taking these steps, one hotel and one team member at a time.

Claire Good is the chief operating officer at Travelodge