Innovating for a Greener Future
Frederik Steensgaard discusses BeCause’s innovative AI-powered platform, its impact on the hospitality industry’s sustainability, and offers advice for entrepreneurs aiming to create technology solutions for
environmental challenges.
Frederik Steensgaard is a visionary leader at the intersection of technology and sustainability. As the CEO and Co-Founder of BeCause, a pioneering enterprise software company based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Frederik is driving a transformative shift in the hospitality industry. BeCause’s AI-powered sustainability data management hub is revolutionizing how hotels collect, manage, and report their sustainability data, making it easier and more cost-effective for them to meet their environmental goals and regulatory requirements. This innovative platform not only streamlines operations but also provides a competitive edge in a market where eco-consciousness is increasingly paramount.
Frederik’s journey to founding BeCause in 2021 is rooted in a decade of experience in entrepreneurial and managerial roles at companies like William Demant, Market Minds, and 180 Degrees Consulting. His passion for travel and a deep-seated concern for its environmental impact inspired him to create a solution that could drive the hospitality industry towards a greener future. Today, BeCause supports over 50,000 companies, including major hotel groups like Radisson, certification bodies such as GreenKey, and industry partners like the UN GSTC and Booking.com.
In this exclusive interview, Frederik shares the motivations behind BeCause, the challenges faced during its inception, and the pivotal role of AI in combating greenwashing and enhancing sustainability reporting. He also offers valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to create impactful technology solutions in the sustainability space. Join us as we delve into the mind of a leader who is not only shaping the future of sustainable travel but also setting a benchmark for innovation and environmental stewardship in the tech industry.
What motivated you and Jonas Jacobsen to found BeCause?
Jonas and I met while working on a project for a global healthcare technology company, and we immediately connected over our shared frustration with the slow advancement of sustainability-focused initiatives in the market. People expressed a desire to be more sustainable in their everyday lives everywhere we looked, but in many cases, the market failed to supply transparent and trustworthy solutions.
With Jonas’ engineering background and my experience in management consulting, we believed that by connecting sustainability ecosystems with the right technology infrastructure, we could drive (and accelerate) industries toward a greener future.
We decided to start with the travel sector, specifically hospitality, for several reasons. First, we knew there was a strong demand for more sustainable hotel options, but there were few ways for consumers to find and book those choices. Travel also holds a personal significance for me. Growing up in Oman, I witnessed the degradation of coral reefs due to various factors, including tourism, which impacted me. Finding ways to reduce travel’s impact on local environments became a passion of mine.
Can you describe the main challenges you faced when launching BeCause in 2021 and how you overcame them?
When we launched BeCause, we asked hotels and booking platforms to completely change how they managed sustainability data, as their processes were fragmented, siloed and manual.
As with any startup, we had to prove how moving to our model—a centralized, shared platform that can synergize and automatically communicate hotel sustainability data across stakeholders, from hotels and booking platforms to green certification entities and regulators—could help them drive new business, increase access to sustainability data, and significantly reduce their operational costs.
Honestly, it took a while to get this innovation off the ground initially. We needed to develop a complex product suite accommodating multiple types of market stakeholders and then educate and convince the market of this model.
Thankfully, we found wonderful partners in Booking.com, Radisson Hotel Group, and Green Key. They quickly understood our vision and recognized the uniqueness and value of our solution from each of their company perspectives. Their support has been instrumental in our exponential growth since then.
Another challenge we faced early on was the general industry awareness about the growing tidal wave of sustainability demands that were about to hit businesses in travel, tourism and hospitality. However, this has subsided, with the various new regulatory frameworks and industry-wide standards making the issue and priority clear and urgent across the entire industry.
How does BeCause facilitate connecting hotels and sustainability solution providers to address specific issues?
By assembling all stakeholders of the travel ecosystem and their data in a central hub, we empower decision-makers with the data analysis and options they need to improve their sustainability data and the performance of their businesses. Whether it’s the measurement of their carbon emissions, reduction of their food waste, or providing strategic consulting BeCause helps companies identify their sustainability challenges and match hotels with data and solution providers specialized in their individual needs. Our model creates a triple win: benefiting the hotel in need, the vendor providing the solution, and promoting planetary sustainability.
How do you envision the role of AI evolving in BeCause’s platform to prevent issues like greenwashing and enhance sustainability reporting?
We already use AI today to facilitate data reuse, enabling hotels to collect a metric once and then have our platform automatically map it to meet various stakeholder requirements. For example, a sustainability metric collected for the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which helps hotels meet their obligations under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), can also be used to comply with voluntary certifications like Green Key, RFPs requested by corporate travelers, and industry standards, e.g., Hotel Sustainability Basics, with little manual effort.
The AI layer in BeCause also increasingly identifies information gaps and potential input errors, automates workflows, and recommends actions. For example, if a hotel is a few metrics away from qualifying for Green Key certification, the platform can nudge the property to collect this missing information. This creates an ecosystem where it’s far more accessible and less expensive to obtain certification, which is the best way for hotels to prove their commitment to sustainability and minimize greenwashing.
How does BeCause align its sustainability goals and initiatives with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, and what role do you see your platform playing in helping the tourism industry meet these international climate commitments?
One can only manage what is measured, and what is measured typically becomes managed. Our primary role is enabling and supporting this virtuous cycle as the world demands it.
Firstly, by helping hotels and tourism operators collect and report sustainability data, they can significantly improve awareness and transparency across their operational footprint and unique impact potential, positive and negative. This gives them the insights and levers needed to make bold moves towards meeting and exceeding their international climate commitments.
I believe CSRD is the jumping-off point for greater sustainability across industries worldwide. While it directly pertains only to the EU, more countries have and will introduce mandatory corporate sustainability reporting to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement, and private market frameworks similarly align with CSRD as the de facto standard.
BeCause makes compliance with CSRD and many other pertinent frameworks easier in one go. As an industry-specific sustainability data management platform, we’ve sifted through the thousands of data points in ESRS to pull out the ones relevant to the hotel and tourism industries. Without BeCause, the process of collecting, coordinating, validating and reporting is overly complicated, time-consuming and costly, if at all feasible for the typical budgets and resources of hotels. With BeCause, we can get this done dramatically simpler, faster, and cheaper.
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to create technology solutions to enhance sustainability in various industries?
While it would be great if companies were motivated by pure altruism when it comes to sustainability, to be successful, your solution needs to clearly illustrate how it benefits these companies financially or operationally. Aim to solve those pain points in the process rather than using greater sustainability as your sole objective (even if it is unmistakably critical). In other words, when it comes to enhancing sustainability, the keyword is a classic but true buzzword–create synergy. Our intense focus on this has enabled our company to break through and accelerate our growth.
