From Research to Practical Solutions: How to Reduce Food Waste in Tourism and Hospitality
On the occasion of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, observed every year on 29 September, the UP Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica highlights research findings showing that even relatively small, well-designed changes can be effective in reducing food waste in tourism and hospitality.
A new open-access book, Reducing Plate Waste in Tourism and Hospitality, has also just been published, bringing together research findings and practical solutions for reducing plate waste in tourism and hospitality.
Research shows that reducing food waste does not necessarily require major investments or significant changes to the food offering. Small, carefully designed changes in how food is presented to guests and how they are encouraged to choose appropriate portions can already make a considerable difference.
For example, reducing the diameter of plates at buffet meals by just a few centimetres reduced plate waste by approximately 20%, without limiting guests’ choice. A similar effect was achieved with a simple message encouraging guests to feel free to return to the buffet for an additional serving – food waste decreased by approximately 21%.
Researchers observed an even greater effect among families: a simple game encouraging children to take only as much food as they intended to eat reduced plate waste by approximately 34%. Importantly, measures like these do not diminish the quality of the guest experience. On the contrary, carefully designed behavioural interventions can integrate sustainability goals into a positive and even enjoyable dining experience.
However, to take effective action, we first need to know where and how much food is being wasted. Hospitality providers often only discover which meals, parts of their food offering or buffet stations generate the most waste once they begin monitoring it systematically. Even a short monitoring period – for example, one week – can reveal patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed and enable more targeted measures.
Combining data with an understanding of guest behaviour creates opportunities for solutions that are both effective and guest-friendly. Guests do not always need to be addressed with messages about environmental consequences or a sense of responsibility. Approaches based on convenience, positive encouragement and a good overall experience are often more effective.
A sustainability measure therefore does not necessarily have to mean a restriction for the guest. A well-designed solution can simultaneously reduce food waste, improve the guest experience and contribute to more efficient operations for tourism and hospitality businesses.
Making Research Knowledge Accessible to Practice
The book Reducing Plate Waste in Tourism and Hospitality is intended for an international audience and is therefore published in English. Above all, however, it was created with the aim of ensuring that research findings do not remain confined to academia but instead provide a practical foundation for concrete changes in hotels, restaurants and other tourism and hospitality businesses.
The publication is freely available online:
https://uq.pressbooks.pub/reducing-plate-waste-in-tourism-and-hospitality/
Special thanks go to the Association of Tourist Farms of Slovenia, the Tourism and Hospitality Chamber of Slovenia, and their members, whose cooperation and support made it possible to conduct this research in real-world settings. Without access to tourism and hospitality businesses, their employees and guests, the research underpinning the findings and recommendations presented here would not have been possible.
The project is therefore also a good example of why closer cooperation between research and industry, together with mutual trust, is essential for the successful transition towards a more sustainable future for tourism. Research needs access to real-world environments in order to develop and test solutions, while the industry needs reliable data and research-based knowledge to translate sustainability goals into measures that genuinely work.
It is precisely this kind of collaboration that enables sustainability to move beyond commitments and principles and become part of everyday business operations, resulting in measurable changes in practice.
