Early in 2020, we partnered with the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST). We see GDST work as a major step to standardize traceability processes and facilitating interoperability across partners in the supply chain. This is one of the reasons we adopted the GDST 1.0 standard. Specifically, GDST provides us with a framework of what data needs to be collected at each step of the supply chain. This waywe can better understand what information is needed and how we can engage our suppliers (and their suppliers) to join GDST
and help improve traceability within their Iberostar’s responsible seafood commitment own supply chain.
The complexity of our supply chain is one of the largest challenges we face. Seafood procurement is not always directly between the producer and the hotel’s distributor. In many cases, our distributors can be four or five times removed from the producers, especially when brokers are involved and other importers and exporters that help aggregate products before sending the shipment to our distributors. By working with GDST, we hope stakeholders in our supply chain adopt the standard and work with us in collecting and sharing their key data that can be verified. Inviting these companies to participate in GDST helps overcome the traceability “learning curve” by giving guidelines for data they should be collecting depending on where they are in the supply chain.
In the tourism industry, many of the medium and larger enterprises face challenges to standardize data collection across the multiple companies, franchises, and supplier partners within their network. At Iberostar, our hotels are almost exclusively owned or managed. Thus we saw clear opportunities to work in our group of property owners and owned hotels to standardize data collection within our supplier network. However for many other tourism groups, this interoperability we hope will be a game changer for better adoption of data collection and traceability practices. Furthermore, many of the distributors in the countries we operate provide products to multiple chains in the region. When distributors opt in, this helps us motivate even more of the supply chain and other tourism providers to engage in traceability.
So far we only had access to data collected for the 65% of properties that are part of our centralized procurement. We understand that in order to successfully achieve our goal of 100% responsible by 2025, data needs to include that of the properties that we manage. With that said we have included in our strategy milestones to achieve this goal. Our goal by 2021 is to complete the data collection of properties in Morocco, Tunisia and Greece, and by 2022 complete data collection of properties in Cuba and transition their purchasing to responsible sources.
The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability’s (GDST) Frankie Terzoli recently met with members of Iberostar to get the inside scoop on their plans for improving seafood traceability in their hotel supply chains, and how being a GDST member and adopting GDST 1.0 will benefit their traceability work.
FRANK: Where are you focusing improvements in your supply chains in the next year?
ADRIANA: We will continue to work with our suppliers in collecting key data elements of all our products by first prioritizing those species we source in higher volume and working with our chefs and the purchasing team to identify products of lesser volume that we could remove from our menus. Our goal is to improve efficiencies in our procurement and eliminate product references that do not support our long-term goal of 100% responsible seafood by 2025. By collecting data, we are also able to work with producers and distributors to support fisheries and farms that are in a path towards improvement, sourcing same species from more responsible sources or working with lesser known species which also meet our commitment.
F: How will the GDST help you achieve the goals in those commitments?
A: We see the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability as a major step to standard ize traceability processes and facilitating interoperability across partners in the supply chain. This is one of the reasons we adopted the GDST 1.0 standard. Specifically, GDST provides us with a framework of what data needs to be collected at each step of the supply chain. This way we can better understand what information is needed and how we can engage our suppliers (and their suppliers) to join GDST and help improve traceability within their own supply chain.
