What we actually do
Travel
Train, always. Within Switzerland and to neighbouring countries, we take the train. When we travel to our clients in South Tyrol, we combine one trip with all meetings. Through 2025 we planned every business trip that way, combining meetings to avoid empty journeys, and took the train whenever it was possible. For our visit to our clients Camping and Locanda Mistral, we opted for public transportation all the way: buses, trains, no flights. We do fly when there is genuinely no alternative, for example to our client MAP Hotel in Cyprus. But we also prove it can work differently: we collaborate with Príncipe Collection and Faya Foundation in São Tomé and Príncipe entirely remotely. When we do fly, we make every trip count.
Flexible working
Online meetings are our default for client collaboration. As a small team in Zurich, we work flexibly and meet in person when it adds value. This has been our way of working since long before anyone called it a trend.
Digital tools and AI
This is the new frontier for us. We use AI daily – Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and others – for writing, research, structuring and now for building our AI coaching programme. We know these tools consume energy and water. We commit to reviewing the environmental impact of our digital tools once a year, starting 2026. And we commit to using AI intentionally, not carelessly – consolidating queries, choosing the right tool for the job, being conscious of how and when we use it.
Conscious purchasing
We buy locally and from small suppliers where possible. We favour refurbished electronics, recycle and think twice before buying anything new. In 2025 the new studio display came refurbished from a Swiss company that buys back and reconditions used equipment, and our printing went to a house that is FSC certified and offsets through myclimate.
Green hosting
Our MAp Boutique Consultancy website, The Sustainable Hotel platform and all hotel websites we create and host for clients run on servers in Germany powered by green energy, with the highest data security standards. Green electricity and the German server location are a written condition of the engagement with our web developer, and once a year we confirm they still hold.
Client work
Sustainability is part of every project we take on. Not as an add-on, not as a nice-to-have. It is woven into the concepts, brands, strategies and coaching programmes we create. Every incoming request runs through our Client and Project Selection Criteria, which asks what a project does to the place it happens in. Once a year we take the three most material projects and assess their environmental impact in writing.
What we have not done yet
In our Impact Report 2025 we said we would make our own footprint more visible and find a way to measure our emissions. We did not get there. We travelled by train, we planned trips to avoid empty journeys, we stayed remote-first. What we still do not have is a number. That is the first target below.
Who does what
A plan needs people, time and resources behind it. Here is what we put behind this one.
People
- Magdalena Rungaldier is accountable for the plan and holds the targets on travel, project scope and hosting.
- Lisa Flora Buchauer holds the annual review of our digital tools and the first emissions baseline.
- Both carry the plan into client projects.
Time
- The MAp Strategy Days have a fixed agenda item on climate action.
- One quarterly workshop a year goes to the review of digital tools and AI.
Technical and material
- Green hosting with our web developer as a standing cost in our supplier budget, for every site we host ourselves.
- Rail and public transport budgeted as the normal case.
- Refurbished hardware as the default when equipment is replaced.
Who we do this with
Our team. We set and review the targets together at the Strategy Days, and progress is a standing item in our team meetings.
Our clients. We ask at the start of a project what their own climate commitments are, so that our work supports them.
Our suppliers. What they control, we agree with them. Green hosting started as our request and is now a condition of the engagement.
Our industry. HotellerieSuisse, the Swiss Tourism Federation and our research partnership with ZHAW are where we test what works and bring back what we learn.
Our readers. The hoteliers who use our handbooks and The Sustainable Hotel platform tell us what is realistic in a running hotel. That changes what we recommend, and it changes this plan.
Where a target turns out to be unworkable for the people who have to deliver it, we change the target rather than drop it quietly.
The AI question
We are developing an AI coaching programme to help boutique hotels stay visible and relevant in a world that is changing fast. So that hotels that are trying to do good, that are on the same journey as we are, can continue their work and are found by guests.
We understand the environmental cost of AI – and we need to start measuring and optimising it. But we also know this is where the future goes. It is our responsibility to stay the innovative consultancy we have been since we started. The ones who dare to do things differently, who launched a sustainability platform and wrote handbooks when nobody asked for them, who are at the edge of what is coming.
In order to MAp out a better future for all. And of course, to put our hotel and business clients on the global MAp.
How we measure it
Every target has a measure, a deadline and a name against it.
Train or public transport for every journey within Switzerland and to neighbouring countries.
- Measure: 100 per cent of journeys, exceptions logged with a reason.
- By when: 31 December 2026, then each year.
- Responsible: Magdalena Rungaldier.
A first emissions baseline for travel and energy.
- Measure: baseline calculated and published in the Impact Report.
- By when: 31 January 2027.
- Responsible: Lisa Flora Buchauer.
No meeting is a reason to fly.
- Measure: no flight taken for a meeting that could be held online or reached by train.
- By when: 31 December 2026, then each year.
- Responsible: Magdalena Rungaldier.
Annual review of the environmental impact of our digital tools, including AI.
- Measure: review completed and written up.
- By when: first by 31 December 2026, then each year.
- Responsible: Lisa Flora Buchauer.
Sustainability in the scope of every client project.
- Measure: 100 per cent of project scopes.
- By when: 31 December 2026, then each year.
- Responsible: Magdalena Rungaldier.
Green hosting for every website we host ourselves.
- Measure: 100 per cent on green electricity, confirmed with the supplier once a year.
- By when: 31 December 2026, then each year.
- Responsible: Magdalena Rungaldier.
The environmental dimension built into our consulting frameworks.
- Measure: frameworks updated and in use with clients.
- By when: 30 June 2027.
- Responsible: Magdalena Rungaldier.
What’s next
Our next Impact Report (January 2027) will review how this plan worked in practice. What went well, what did not, what we adjusted. Because climate action is not a document – it is how we run our business, every day.
This plan is reviewed every year at our Strategy Days and fully updated every 36 months. The next full update is due in September 2029.
Approved by the highest governing body of MAp Boutique Consultancy GmbH:
Magdalena Rungaldier, Owner and Principal
Zurich – 19 September 2026
Written and illustrated with the support of AI tools. The ideas, decisions and soul are entirely MAp.
ke time for prosecco