Regenerative tourism and stewardship are now mainstream. They are both buzz terms and hugely profitable ventures for those hotels and resorts that put in the blood, sweat and tears to set up the programs up properly.
Without burying the lead, for hotel brands and owners, agrobiodiversity is a niche way to create exceptional guest experiences, especially in luxury, and drive demand or ADR uplift.
In today’s world of endless brand expansions and the explosion of luxury hotels, guests yearn for places that are offering more than just beach access. They want exclusivity and are willing to pay more for it: exclusive access to historic sights, private excursions to remote destinations or, in this case, the ability to taste unique, esoteric foods.
The Next Step for Regenerative Tourism
But there’s another step that hotels can take, one that’s both noble and also barely understood outside of small groups of ecology or climate science circle.
And because few are engaged with it, that means there’s tremendous potential for hotel product differentiation to drive ADR, ancillaries and overall business value.
This is agrobiodiversity, and it will become increasingly important as climate resiliency efforts become more common. Agrobiodiversity involves the planning efforts to shift away from monocropping which is both a major contributor to carbon emissions as well as putting us at risk for superbug-born famines or crop collapse events.
The revenue opportunity for hotels is to support food crop resiliency through agrobiodiversity as a method to ramp up a brand’s regenerative cachet, heighten the availability of locally sourced nutritious foods and create culinary, wellness or agricultural experiences that sell.
What Is Agrobiodiversity?
A clinical definition of this term is increasing the variety of food crops grown, both within a species by using heirloom cultivars or landraces and by farming different edible species that are either highly regional or not commonly known at the supermarket.
This definition is often confused with ingredient diversity. As an example, a tropical fruit salad may comprise a high ingredient count with shredded coconut, papaya, pineapple, mango, dragon fruit and kiwi. But at the end of the day, those fruits have more or less the same genetics whether they are purchased in New York, Cape Town or Bangkok.
Corn tells an even more dire story. In the pursuit of yield, we’ve domesticated and genetically modified this cash crop from its near-inedible, but tough-as-nails, ancestor, teosinte, into white corn which we recognize by its massive, uniform cob at its peak. The tradeoff is that our modern corn is all-but-completely dependent on herbicides and pesticides, which all seep into the water supply, as well as fertilizers which have a big carbon footprint.
Landraces and indigenous crops are hardier and well-adapted to their region, most often requiring no chemical sprays or other human-made additives besides TLC and perhaps intercropping layouts like the Aztec milpa system (rows of maize, beans and squash). Yields and growing difficulties aside, agrobiodiversity is next-level regenerative agriculture, helping provide foods that may resist blights that infect common crops while restoring the soil quality and possibly being carbon positive.
“But there’s plenty of diversity in the produce aisles already!” you might say. As a miracle of globalized supply chains and refrigeration, a contemporary grocery store may look wildly diverse by offering everything from Mexican avocados and South American bananas to Californian strawberries and New Jersey blueberries. But all the strawberries are cultivars with very similar genetics; all the blueberries of a narrow range of juicy, sugar-rich high bush; all the bananas Cavendish.
In the relentless push for yield, we’ve selected only those plants (and to a lesser extent, livestock pedigrees) that maximize for tonnage. This has narrowed intraspecies biodiversity, while also incentivizing farmers away from those plants that are temperamental — for perspective, there’s a reason açaí only makes it out of the Amazon in powdered form; it degrades almost immediately upon picking — or low yield.
For every fruit and vegetable that hits the shelves in the average North American or European supermarket, there are dozens or hundreds of wilder, largely undomesticated species, each with a story to tell.
Instead of mangos, why not wild mangos? Cavendish bananas are high yield but also highly boring because you can find them all around the world, so why not wilder types like blue java or pink? Better yet, look up the cassabanana which can grow two feet long! In the bakery, try out spelt or einkorn wheat instead of the (lower-nutrient) durum that’s in nearly all bread products. Besides fruit, vegetables and breads, there are underappreciated herbs, nuts, tubers, seeds, sauces, desserts, cheeses, beverages and even cocktail recipes that an intrepid proprietor can bring to the forefront.
This is the goal of agrobiodiversity for hotels: tell the story of the planet’s beauty by refocusing on the forgotten foods of the local land, and turn a profit for your efforts.
How to Make Money from Agrobiodiversity?
In a word: experiences. If you are serving the same food as the restaurant down the street, what makes your restaurant special? Service, decor and presentation will work, but agrobiodiversity activates a fourth lever.
While this is more of a trend for rural properties, an urban hotel can partner with heritage farms or develop approachable education campaigns in collaboration with local chefs to fight against ‘cuisine homogenization’. In a push for hyperlocal, this can be an angle to consider. To add to the prestige for a restaurant, organizations like Michelin have their Green Star program to highlight sustainable F&B businesses. Regardless, a lot of thought has to be given to the strategy as these relationships will require a purchasing manager, tighter reordering controls and more seasonal reshuffling of the menu.
A hotel can go further than a restaurant by offering elements of culinary immersion. Cooking classes are a gem by showing guests how to prepare these rare finds. On the resort side, an onsite organic garden or agroforestry setup is the perfect place to offer tours with farm-to-fork experiences. Agrobiodiversity can impact the spa where skincare or cosmetic products can be infused with rarer, local ingredients.
Right now, agrobiodiversity is mostly a luxury play. Guests are willing to pay more per plate for tasting these esoteric ingredients. And with today’s shift in value away from McLuxury properties, guests want more than just beach access, a bar overlooking the ocean and a spa with great massages. They crave sense of place, authenticity, exclusivity and scarcity.
Ultimately, agrobiodiversity is hardly a silver bullet towards obtaining that uniqueness that draws in the jetsetters, but it can be a key pillar for defining the brand.
Agrobiodiversity Hospitality Examples
While agrobiodiversity will be table stakes for luxury hospitality in a decade and a half, there are a few exceptional places that are already hot on the trail.
- The Lodge and Spa at Brush Creek Ranch north of Denver in Wyoming wholly embraces the ranch-to-table philosophy for astronomical ADR as a result. The lodge honors their 30,000 acres with 80 different varieties of fruits and heirloom vegetables cultivars grown in their onsite, year-round greenhouse, with the grains used to power their distillery. But look past the ranch-raised, grass-finished, American wagyu and the on-prem creamery where guests can make their own fresh cheeses or learn about the aging process. Beyond these noble ventures, this esteemed pioneer outpost actively supports the regrowth of indigenous crops and also leans heavily into sustainable, foraged ingredients like juniper for making its own gin, wild herbs like blackberry mint and sour berries that also happen to be significantly higher in antioxidants than their store-bought comparisons.
- The Peninsula in Bangkok offers a Thai herbs 101 program from the hotel’s own ‘Naturally Peninsula’ garden. The course invites guests to discover Thailand’s most renowned herbs and spices used in many natural products such as foods, medicines, cosmetics, essential oils and balms with ingredients both known and unfamiliar like kaffir lime, lemongrass, galangal, krachai, fingerroot, citronella and turmeric – all an integral part of Thai culture and exuding sense of place.
- Besides its heavenly South Pacific lagoon access at its doorsteps, Aitutaki Lagoon Private Island Resort in the Cook Islands on a small footprint catering to only 33 bungalows still has found room for an organic garden. It grows mainstays like coconut, papaya, bananas and limes but also breadfruit and the indigenous, ‘exploding planet’ Hala fruit for guests to try. And grown in very limited amounts, some adventurous guests may even have a chance to try the ‘vomit fruit’ noni which has been renowned in Polynesia for its medicinal qualities for centuries. As a side note, when prepared properly according to traditional methods, the noni sheds its unctuousness and takes on a uniquely delectable flavor.
- Another urban hotel to give more perspective on how this can be done, the Fairmont Rio de Janeiro Copacabana’s signature restaurant, Marine Resto, has its own branded olive oil to complement all the other authentic culinary delights like fish of the day, cupuaçu sorbet or a tasty cashew fruit-based dessert. Here’s the kicker: did you know that Brazil has a burgeoning olive oil production in its southern states? Rather than import and white label from the Mediterranean, this luxury hotel with sweeping panoramic views over the country’s most famous beach sources fruttato olives locally, thereby supporting this nascent industry and also helping fulfill Accor’s Planet 21 sustainability pledge.
- To bring this over to the restaurant side, GUSTU in La Paz has set up a localized supply chain and rotating menu that celebrates Bolivia’s diverse ecosystems and therein promotes niche crops from the Andes and Amazon such as inca nuts (sacha inchi) and mashua tubers, as well as traditional dishes like thayacha (Andean ice cream).
- Hardly the only restaurant that’s embracing local biodiversity, another example from South America is NUEMA in Quito, Ecuador. Over a multi-course tasting menu, diners will experience over 75 ingredients sourced from the country’s different ecological zones, with a personal highlight being a chance to taste Theobroma bicolor, also known as macambo, jaguar chocolate or simply ‘the other chocolate’ (with regular cacao having the species name of Theobroma cacao). Adding to the culinary immersivity, for each dish the raw ingredients were put in the center of the table so that we could touch and compare.
- To circle back to and finish back at the hotel world, Buahan, a Banyan Tree Escape in the jungles of Bali, Indonesia offers a Traditional Jamu Elixir experience. Here, guests are taken through the full process of making this ancient health tonic starting with the roots, bark, spices and seeds through to cooking and consuming. It’s an immersive experience, sure, but also one with a strong wellness component.
And to conclude, if you are interested in learning more about how agrobiodiversity, its importance for fighting climate change and how to unlock value for a hotel property, three great books that touch on the subject are, “Eating to Extinction” (2023) by Dan Saladino, “The Lost Supper” (2023) by Taras Grescoe and “Ultra-Processed People” (2025) by Chris van Tulleken.
