Our sustainability work

As a tourism and hospitality company, Visit Linköping & Co contributes in many ways to the local community by creating an attractive city, experiences, jobs and employment.

But the tourism and hospitality industry also comes with certain risks and challenges, such as safety issues, the consumption of valuable resources, climate impact and issues related to business ethics. In order to ensure that we are a responsible actor, it is therefore essential for the company to work systematically in the area of sustainability, and in 2018, our owner, the City of Linköping, committed to the goals of Agenda 2030 and the global sustainable development goals. In 2019, the company therefore developed its first sustainability strategy, and this strategy now guides everything we do.

Sustainability strategy

Visit Linköping’s sustainability strategy is built on a framework with four areas of sustainability. They cover priority sustainability issues for Visit Linköping & Co and we work with these issues on a daily basis. The four areas are: climate- and resource-efficient operations, inclusive tourism and hospitality industry, proud employees and long-term economy.

Examples of what we do

Our sustainability strategy is incorporated into the work we do each and every day, and includes both big and small sustainability issues. The company has a sustainability group with representatives from all business areas, where we work together to drive our sustainability work forward. Here are a few concrete examples of what we do:

• Linköping Konsert & Kongress has been awarded the Nordic Swan Ecolabel for many years and is certified according to Green Key’s international ecolabel for conference and hotel facilities.
• We work to offer an increased range of sustainable food and drink options (e.g. locally produced, organic and vegetarian) at our own arenas. We adapt our range according to the season and work to develop our collaboration with local suppliers. We continuously work to reduce the food waste generated from our activities and process the waste in an environmentally friendly way.
•  Linköping Konsert & Kongress has been “menscertifierat” (a label for menstrual aware work life) since 2022.
• In 2023, a major renovation will be carried out in Linköping Konsert & Kongress, where we will be changing all lighting to LED in order to cut energy consumption in half.
• We always encourage those who attend our events to use public transport, cycle or walk to our events.
• We have developed a new policy for sustainable purchasing and a code of conduct for our suppliers.
• Once a month, we hold “language lunches” for new arrivals in collaboration with the Red Cross, where several of our employees participate.
• We offer practical work and supervised placements to a large number of people so that they can take the first steps towards entry into the labour market.
• We work to educate and inspire those working in the hospitality and tourism industry in Linköping to adopt more sustainable practices and we highlight experiences related to sustainability in our communication. We have formed a reference group for sustainability that includes companies that are significant actors in the area of sustainability.
• We allow our employees to perform volunteer work during working hours one day a year.
• We have produced the video Tidsresan (Time Travel), where we inspire viewers to visit cultural attractions using sustainable travel by bus.