Introduction
This report aims to analyse the Triple Bottom Line theory in accordance to sustainability methods and processes. The event which will be related to this study will be Tomorrowland the festival which has been held since year 2005. The sustainability policy of the event’s business processes and operations will be critically assessed and appraised which will be aligned with suitable recommendations for more effective sustainability methods.
Tomorrowland
Tomorrowland is an Electronic Music Festival held in Boom, Belgium every year since 2005. The target audience of the festival are young adults from ages 18 to 27. Their socioeconomic target are of the middle class income group. Their marketing mix is fairly concentrated with individuals are highly focused on energy electronic music .
The festival will be critically analysed by using the SWOT model.
Tomorrowland creators and management find different methods and strategies which satisfies the needs and wants of the customers. They hire, search and invite the best DJs and artists from around the world. Customers are equipped with shops, BBQ areas, bakeries, restaurants and other necessities which are readily available within the campsite. Moreover, customers are safe and secure with strong security personnel and policies. In unison with the security personnel, the festival is filled with hundreds of staff members to ensure that the event runs smoothly. Tomorrowland has been strategizing, collecting data and fully comprehending the needs and wants of the festival-goers every year, since the festival was first started .
Triple Bottom Line
Businesses, non-profit organisations and governments have been pining for sustainability and are making it an organisational goal and objective. The interest and use of triple bottom line accounting has been growing exponentially within various sectors. These companies have implemented the triple bottom line sustainability framework to appraise their organisational performance and also governments have taken this comparable approach and gained cash at the state, federal and local levels. TBL is a functional bookkeeping framework that integrates and combines three dimensions of performance which are social, financial and environmental. Before Elkingon (1998) introduced the triple bottom line framework for sustainability, environmentalist struggled to measure for sustainability.
The main notion of the triple bottom line is that it demands that a company’s duty lies with the stakeholders rather than the stockholders. Unlike other frameworks that measures performance, the triple bottom line also environmental or social and ecological factors and measures that may be difficult to allocate more suitable means of measurement . TBL dimensions, also known as the 3Ps include People, Planet and Profits. The three dimensions are not measured in common units. Based on past studies, there is no universal standard procedure or methods to calculate the TBL. The advantage to this is that entities and or businesses do not have to comply to set standards. They will be able to acclimatize the all-purpose framework to the requirements of the company, the dissimilar projects and policies in hand and or the geographic boundaries . Local governments and businesses may engage in environmental sustainability with similar terms such as reducing the amount of solid waste whereas a local mass transfer may quantify their level of success in terms of passenger miles. As for a for-profit bus company, they would measure their success in terms of EPS (earnings per share). Therefore, the TBL is appropriate for any business type as it can accommodate these different requirements by these different entities .
The TBL allows companies to be case specific or in other cases to be more broad scoped. They will be able to measure impacts across large or a more narrow geographical boundaries which includes small towns. A project specific TBL would quantity the effects of environments in particular of projects of specific areas. For example, a community’s park. Also, TBL can be pragmatic to the infrastructure projects or in energy policies. Additionally, the geographic scope and the type of project has the driving effect that many of the decisions that will be made in accordance to the measurements which will used and included. Ultimately, the measures chosen and set will be decided by the stakeholders and also the ability to gather the necessary information and data .
The Measures
The economic measures deal with the bottom line and also the inflow and outflow of the money . The measures may look at specific areas such as profits and expenditures, business environment, tax, employment rates and the diversity factors within the business. These measures may include these examples – cost of underemployment, the size of the establishment, personal and non-personal income, career development and the revenue of the sector which contributes to the gross state of the product . The environmental measures represent the natural resources and the reflection of potential influences to its viability. This measure includes the quality of water and air, energy consumption, toxic and solid waste products and natural resources. In an ideal situation, long-range trends available to each environmental variable would assist organisations in identifying the impacts of policies and projects within that specific area . These areas includes solid waste management, electricity consumption and hazardous waste management. Social measures are variables which refer to the social scopes of a community or a selected region which would include the dimensions of social resources and equity, education, quality of life and health and wellbeing. These potential variables include unemployment rate, the participation of women in the workforce, household income and health and adjusted life expectancy. Due to the nature of the triple bottom line, some of these approaches and methods include the development of a decision making matrix which may be incorporated into public preferences into the project. Also, a comprehensive and participative evaluation of the project to be done with the note and ranking of the components of a sustainable framework in accordance to community priorities .
The few challenges of the TBL framework include the ability to measure each of the three categories. To be able to find applicable data and information to calculate the contribution of the projects or policy’s sustainability. Other than that, the framework allows organisations to evaluate and critically appraise the consequences of the decisions made from the perspective
Triple Bottom Line and Hospitality within the Festival Industry
The hospitality industry has taken many innovative and productive strides towards sustainable development. Based on Hourde (2008), sustainable hospitality has played significant roles in encompassing strategies and techniques within the industry. This includes the business’ efforts in boosting environmentally friendly approaches. These strategies and operations include reforestation, green energy efficient practices and eco-resorts. The festival industry has explored various initiatives that could promote sustainability within the effects of hospitality .
The music industry has changed a lot since the creation of the Internet. Various musicians have found great source of profits from the live performances than just selling record. In the past decade, record sales have dropped about 50% and the concert and festival industry has increased its profits by 40%. With this, there has been a bigger production of values and larger income for sponsorship deals which resulted in drawing in large crowds to these events . Due to the success of these festivals within the market and also new festivals entering the markets, the industry is anticipated to grow. With the increasing and growing numbers, the environmental influences will rise as well. These events entices tens of thousands of festival-goers, which leads to damaging carbon emissions due to transportation and also a multitude of other factors. Therefore, these impacts must be constantly monitored and internalised into the events’ planning and strategy model .
Based on the encompassing studies conducted by Mair and Lang (2010), their Mair and Jago model inspects the use of sustainability in the music festival industry. According to the representatives involved in the festivals which are known for environmental consciousness, the main drivers for greening these festivals was to enhance the image of the festival, consumer demand, increase competitive advantage, corporate social responsibility policies and supply chain management . The issue of sustainability in festivals has been approached with the Stakeholder Theory. Hede (2007) defines stakeholders as a group of individuals who are able to affect the decision making process in the achievement of the organisations goals and objectives . Arcordia and Reid (2002) found that the sponsors, employees, participants and volunteers have the largest effects on the procedures of the festivals. The monetary role of sponsorship in festivals and concerts is substantially large and growing extremely fast. The image of the festival sponsored by a corporation can be transferred affected by the image of the organisation itself. Therefore, in the case of sustainability, in order for an organisation to market itself as a “green” organisation, it is likely that the financing of the festival will be more successful if the operations during the festival are based on sustainable practices . If a festival would be known for its disruption and damage of the local land of the residents or its environmentally unfriendly practices, the company sponsoring is more likely to pull out from the event which will inevitably result in a huge loss in profits and revenue. Tomorrowland’s success has drawn in 185,000 people from over 75 countries from around the world. With so many people in one area for three days straight, there are bounds to be the loss of sustainability efforts. With the stakeholders pressured to be more environmentally friendly to keep up their image among the event-goers, one of the biggest barriers to the implementation of environmental sustainability is the deficiency of financial backing from the stakeholders – the sponsors and investors .
The difference between the stakeholder theory and the triple bottom theory (TBL) is that TBL investigates sustainable changes. The TBL method is the most appropriate approach in constructing environmentally responsive business judgements. TBL allows the event planners and managers the opportunity to consider factors other than the main issues and factors caused by financial support . Two of the most difficult to green during environmental sustainability is transportation and waste management.
Analysis and Application of Tomorrowland’s Policy
The issues in relation to transportation is due to the greenhouse gas emissions produced from transportation from travel and from the events is problematic. This is mainly due to the social externalities produced by event goers and the carbon emissions. Car traffic makes up for the majority of the transportation of the festivals. For Tomorrowland, there are shuttles to chauffeur the event-goers or attendees from different areas of the festival. This lowers the gas emissions by half. Based on Robbins (2007), the suggestions made to lower the emissions were outlined into six criteria. First off, the location should be an area which has been used by other festivals before, an areas which has previous experience hosting events; there should at least be an existing infrastructure for transportation . Also, the location should be placed where there has been previous car substitutes such as parks, it should be able to accommodate longer stays so that the goers will be able to stay for more than the duration of the festival. Tomorrowland has indicated spaces for the attendees to set up camp within the festival locations. They are driven up to the locations which decreases gas emissions and other forms of pollutions are also able to sustain with lessening the use of transportation as the festival is equipped with all the requirements needed by the event-goers who choose to stay for the whole period of the festival. These efforts can increase the profits of the festival as increased attendance and the longer the attendees stay, revenue generated will increase exponentially and also other externalities will be removed .
Waste management has been studied in various events but the most similar event to that of a festival would be a sports event due to its large influx of attendees for a brief period of time. Waste management could be initiated by starting with the use of sustainable materials which can both satisfy the need of cost saving initiatives and the decrease of unnecessary waste. These efforts however cannot be achieved by the stakeholders alone, waste management is a team effort and calls for the cooperation between the concession vendors, the event planners and the attendees. The festivals could set up a concession stand which would collect recyclable materials which will be then be repaid through incentives to the attendees. The initiative which can be implemented could be a recyclables-for-goods which instils the use of biodegradable utensils, bottles and cups. Before the events during Tomorrowland starts, a notice is always posted to make the attendees aware of their sustainability policies. Based on their posting, they are always reminding attendees of their goals of a sustainable future. With goals to keep the festival and camping areas as clean as possible. All the garbage collecting points are clearly indicated in the areas within the parking lots, festival ground and the camping area. Using the triple bottom line method, it can be seen that People, Planet and Profit does make a difference in the success of an organisation or event. The people make the event but the planet makes the experience and thus the resultant profit. This all equates to the level of effectiveness of the hospitality of the event. The image of sustainability is one the key dimension which affects the success of a festival nowadays and of course good music.
Recommendations and Conclusion
Based on the analysis above, it can be concluded that the decision to encourage and promote environmentally responsive practices in the music festival industry depends heavily on the ethical values of the main stakeholders and the event planners. In the Triple Bottom Line perspective, it is conclusively more difficult to determine the benefits being both economic and environmental. This is due to the balance of having either one stronger than the other. Based on Tomorrowland’s efforts in their sustainability strategies, the event planners still have plenty to learn as they are doing so since the first event in 2005. For example, the event needs to further analyse and strategize more sustainable efforts to increase the engagement and efficiency and effectiveness of transportation and waste management during the periods of the event such as setting up more innovative methods of recycling has as incentive based recycling which would get attendees to recycle for goods in return.
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