Two Asian travel companies, Banyan Tree and Six Senses Resorts and Spa, have repeated their award-winning performances with consecutive wins in a high-profile sustainable tourism award contest.
Travel magazine Condé Nast Traveller released a statement naming the two Asian firms in its fifth annual World Savers Award. Both companies were commended for the second year in a row.
The World Savers Awards recognise travel companies with outstanding achievements in social responsibility in six categories: education, health, poverty, preservation, wildlife, and “doing it all.”
Singapore-headquartered Banyan Tree won this year’s award for the preservation category for its efforts to harmonise its operations with cultural heritage and environment.
The group has opened resorts in places with distinctive cultures and traditions, which are reflected in architectural designs and interior decorations of its properties. Its resort in Lijian, China, for example, is built with locally-produced pink stone and grey bricks and decorated with Chinese-style silk. Green building experts recommend using locally produced materials to reduce carbon emissions from transporting supplies, and also to support local economies.
Condé Nast highlighted that the company is also committed to environmental conservation. It has set a target of planting 2,000 trees a year under its Greening Communities project launched in 2007. In July, it celebrated an accumulated 100,000 trees planted.
Travellers are taking note of the hotel’s sustainability efforts. Christina Johnson, a New York TV executive who honeymooned in Banyan Tree Lijian in April, told Condé Naste: “This is a luxury resort making a conscious effort to stay true to local culture. Any company that is doing something about its impact on the environment gets a thumbs-up from me. And they treated us like an emperor and empress.”
The company was last year’s winner of large hotel chains for the “doing it all” category, which recognises companies with the best overall approach to CSR, and the runner-up for health initiatives.
Bangkok-based Six Senses Resorts and Spa built on last year’s success as well – it received an honourable mention in the health category in 2010 – by winning the “doing it all” category for small hotel chains.
The company had set up a Social and Environmental Responsibility Fund (SERF), to which all its resorts donate 0.5 per cent of revenues to pay for a wide range of corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects.
Its Soneva Fushi resort in the Maldives contributes about USD$100,000 annually to SERF. While 60 per cent of the projects funded by SERF of Fushi resort are sited near its hotel, 40 per cent have a global focus. Some examples include projects in environmental education in the Maldives, reforestation in Northern Thailand, and marine research in the Indian Oceans.
The company has set a target of becoming carbon-emission neutral and fossil-fuel free by 2012.
Managers of the resort have spent years researching viable renewable energy options, such as solar power, to reach this goal. The resort is also contributing 2 per cent of its room revenue to projects on clean technology, such as a wind turbine project in India.
Although the CSR measures highlighted by the World Savers awards are voluntary, evidence suggests travellers now expect strong CSR policies from the travel industry. In a recent poll of Condé Nast Traveller readers, 93 per cent thought travel companies should be responsible for protecting the environment, while 58 per cent said their choice of hotel is influenced by the support it gives to the local community.
Other winners for the awards include Mozambique-based Guludo Beach Lodge for education, French multinational corporation Accor for health, Spier in South Africa for poverty alleviation, and New York-based Lindblad Expeditions and Australian chain Wolgan Valley Resort & Spa for wildlife conservation. Other awardees for the “doing it all” category include Germany airline Lufthansa, Florida-based cruise line Celebrity Cruises, Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo, and tour operator Abercrombie & Kent.
The judging panel for the award included established figures from various sectors, including professors, news editors and chief executives of companies and organisations.
The award winners are featured in the Condé Nast Traveller September issue and all awardees will be recognised in an awards ceremony during the 2011 World Savers Congress in Singapore this October.
