On Monday 7 September 2026, our team spent the day at Angsana Laguna Phuket for PHIST 2026 – the Phuket Hotels Association's "Beyond Green: Turning Sustainability into Measurable Value in Tourism and Hotels." Now marking its 10th anniversary, the event brought together 26 panels, workshops and masterclasses, a green product expo, a farm zone and a fashion show built entirely from upcycled materials.
From Awareness to Action
The day's sessions, laid out across the Anchan Room and Anchan-Orchid Room, moved quickly from ideas to practical steps: The Future of Food in Hospitality, Beyond Awareness – Turning Green Champions into Change Leaders, and Destinations United – Creating the Next Generation of Sustainable Tourism all ran back to back through the morning, alongside a featured "In Conversation with KP Ho," Founder and Executive Chairman of Banyan Group and Laguna Resorts and Hotels. One slide on sustainable event management put it simply: ask where your waste actually goes, weigh recycling streams separately rather than as one mixed number, and arrange food donation logistics before the event, not after.
What Recycling and Biodiversity Are Really Worth
Two sessions stood out for turning abstract sustainability language into numbers. In "We Recycle Phuket," Andi Becker walked through the real market prices for PET and aluminium collected on the island, making the case that recycling only works at scale once the value comes back to the people doing the sorting. In "Beyond the Hotel Fence," WWF Thailand's Eknarin Ariyavongvat argued that a hotel's own sustainability only goes so far if the destination around it isn't managed the same way, using lessons from Koh Tao to show what destination-level action looks like in practice — a theme that runs through our own sustainability programme as much as it does the island's coral reefs.
A Green Product Expo and a Farm Zone
Between sessions, the expo hall and outdoor Farm Zone gave a more hands-on look at what "sustainable" can mean on a hotel property: natural-refrigerant air-conditioning retrofits, zero-upfront solar, food-waste digesters and solar roofing, eco-microorganism cleaning products, and locally-roasted, Rainforest Alliance coffee. Outside, the Bangtao Farm stall served Apong, a traditional Phuket dessert, next to a Scholars of Sustenance booth explaining how surplus food across the island gets redirected to people who need it rather than into landfill.
Fashion Made From What Was Already There
The day closed with the Remade Elegance Fashion Show, where every outfit on the staircase runway was built from upcycled or recycled material — a fitting bookend to a nearby stall from Share Our Creations, a local initiative that turns unwanted hotel textiles into handmade toys and bags sewn by women in Phuket. It's a reminder that circularity doesn't have to look utilitarian; some of it is genuinely beautiful.
What We're Bringing Back
A day like this rarely hands you one big idea — it hands you a dozen small, specific ones: a supplier to ask about, a way of tracking waste that actually tells you something, a reminder that the numbers behind sustainability matter as much as the intent. Between this and joining the Beyond Cleaning 2026 seminar earlier the same week, it's been a busy September for learning from Phuket's wider hospitality community — and we're glad to be part of it.
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