The hospitality industry accounts for 10 percent of all food waste in the world. Hotel buffets are a major culprit. Annie Jones of Telos Travel says that the younger generation is demanding a change.
“People are saying, ‘I don’t want a buffet, I don’t want a French restaurant if I’m not in France,'” she says. “They want the local flavor.”
Jones reports a shift in the interest of property such as the new Hôtel du Couvent, The farm in Nice, France provides the ingredients for all meals. It is one of the many Luxury Collection properties that lead the way in sustainable dining. Jones says that “these big brands have a great opportunity to make a difference.”
To that end, the Luxury Collection, which is part of Marriott International, brought together 13 of its leading chefs from around the world at MAD Academy, the sustainable-food initiative in Copenhagen founded by Noma chef René Redzepi. They attended three-day seminars to learn how to reduce waste and encourage local buying.
Melina Shannon DiPietro says that the academy has made it clear how essential their skills are to shaping the future. “At the halfway point of the second day there was a discussion where everyone felt that the landscape had changed: for this to be successful, the Luxury Collection needed to examine their daily checklists, and their standards. It would be that deep.”
The first-of -its-kind meeting has already spurred innovation. Chef Joris Larigaldie is the chef at Costa Navarino in Greece, which hosts the Romanos, Other properties. After attending MAD, he went back to the hotel with the idea to turn spent peels from squeezing orange juice into “a delicious fruit gelée for a welcome snack,” Shannon-DiPietro explains.
You can also find out more about the following: Gritti Palace, Venice is a city of beauty and elegance. Reimagined their cooking classes to include a guided tour of the seafood and produce stands in the Rialto market. The hotel planted 6,000 artichokes near nearby islands in order to use the bounty of the plants on its property. In Athens, Hotel Grande Bretagne Now sources its figs directly from a local family farm.
Jan Horák, the chef at Augustine Restaurant at the Prague hotel Augustine, He admitted that at first he was sceptical about the brand’s efforts to promote more sustainable practices. But after attending MAD, he’s all in: “A huge thing I took home was being able to define what ‘local’ means for me,” Horák explains. It’s not about whether you’re German or Czech, French or Italian. You just have to look around you to see what’s growing.”
His commitment was on full view this spring when I sat down for a dinner he had prepared—and was greeted with warm sourdough and butter topped with an electrifying twist on Marmite made from bread left over from the breakfast buffet. Horák had similarly repurposed cast-off items to deliver a vegetarian course of cavatelli pasta. The meal concluded with a dish made of parsnips and fallow deer, baked in leftover coffee grounds. It was a real treat.
The September 2025 issue contains a version of this article. Travel + Leisure, Under the heading “Waste Not”
