Centara Hotels & Resorts Goes Green

Centara Hotels &Resorts commits to environmental sustainability and goes green: Centara Hotels & Resorts gives significance to operating their business and operations to a high degree of ethical, social and environmental responsibility whilst providing an exceptional level of Thai Hospitality along with eco-friendly environment to their guests, to the local community and to the world.

Enhancing its strong environmental commitment, The group selected EC3 Global, a well-known international advisory organisation, assisting Centara Hotels & Resorts to develop an international benchmarking standard, to improve awareness amongst their employees, partners and stakeholders and to attain sustainability.

Five properties under Centara’s portfolio - Bangkok Convention Centre at CentralWorld, Sofitel Centara Grand Resort & Villa Hua Hin, Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui, Centara Karon Resort Phuket, and Centara Grand Beach Resort & Villas Krabi - have participated in this worldwide benchmarking scheme.

Three properties - Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui, Centara Grand Beach & Villa Krabi, and Bangkok Convention Centre at CentralWorld - have achieved the prestigious Green Globe Benchmarked status and target to attain in Certification by the first quarter of 2010. Centara Hotels & Resorts aims to have all of Centara "Grand" Hotels & Resorts being benchmarked by second quarter of 2010, followed by Certification later within the year.

By the second quarter of next year, The Group targets to have Centara "Villas" to be committed to benchmarking its water and energy consumption and waste management along with implementing an integrated environmental and social policy by EC3 Global.

Further with rapid growth under Centara’s umbrella, the long-term benefits in term of sustainability delivery will be also factored into its construction, design and operation approach for all its new developments.

Sustainability Vision

"We are committed to integrated sustainable practices whilst providing an exceptional level of Thai Hospitality along with new innovation to our valued customers."
With a strong focus on sustainability inherent in our business model, Centara Hotels & Resorts Social and Environmental Responsibility Policy was established in late 2007 to provide a more measurable approach to its sustainable activities. The Group is committed to operate its businesses and operations to a high degree of ethical, social and environmental responsibility.

Sustainability Policy

In order to achieve our sustainability vision, the Group commits to continually improve the environmental and social sustainability performance in a balanced way to ensure a safe and healthy environment for our staff as well as to deliver the best Thai Hospitality service to our valued guests. Centara Hotels & Resorts have identified a sustainability team and established the following objectives to drive this programme and practice.

• Provide standards throughout the Group for meeting the local legislative, environmental requirements whilst complying to an international standard.
• Set up systematic management of energy consumption.
• Create a report on key environmental performance indicator (KEPI) in order to raise environmental awareness among our associates, guests and communities.
• Integrate sustainability consideration into all our business and operation decisions.
• Ensure that all staff is fully aware of our sustainability policy and they are committed to implementing and to improving it.
• Educate clients and suppliers to be aware of our sustainability policy and encourage them to adopt sustainable management practices.
• Establish action plans on sustainability practice with a regular and consistent monitoring system through the Group.

Our Focus

Centara Hotels & Resorts Sustainability Vision and Policy: Centara Hotels & Resorts sustainable initiatives are developed in line with five sustainability principles:

1. Community Involvement and Support
Centara Hotels & Resorts believes in supporting sustainable business endeavors in the local community. We are committed to support a wide range of local community initiatives and events which have social and environmental benefits.

Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui awarded Silver Certification by global environmental body

Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui has been awarded Silver Certification by EarthCheck, the world's leading sustainable travel and tourism certification organisation, in recognition of the resort's environmental protection practices.

The EarthCheck programme is focused on maximising operational efficiencies to minimise carbon emissions, reduce energy and water consumption, and to reduce and recycle waste.

Silver Certification places the resort as a leader amongst worldwide hospitality operators, as it is awarded only to those organisations that can demonstrate operational practices that adhere to the highest environmental standards.

"We are very proud indeed to have received this certification, which has involved strong teamwork amongst management and staff," says Martin Heiniger, General Manager of Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui "Guests have also participated enthusiastically in many of the activities"

"Helping to save our environment makes everyone feel good, and the EarthCheck programme has been very positive in all respects."

As part of the certification process, Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui successfully benchmarked its operations using the EarthCheck tool, which involved the resort submitting a year's worth of operational data and having it evaluated against data collected from comparable operations worldwide.

Working in this way, the hotel's management team was able to identify where they were out-performing others, and where room for improvement remained.

Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui is located at the heart of Chaweng, Samui's premier beach, shopping and entertainment resort. Set in spacious gardens directly on the beachfront, the hotel has 203 deluxe sea-facing rooms and suites all with private balconies. Leisure amenities include a spa, dive centre, watersports, tennis courts, and extensive facilities for families with young children.

Centara Hotels & Resorts is Thailand's largest operator of hotels, with 44 deluxe and first-class properties covering all the major tourist destinations in the Kingdom. A further 13 resorts in the Maldives, Indian Himalayas, Philippines, Vietnam, Bali Indonesia, Mauritius Indian Ocean, brings the present total to 57 properties. Brands and properties within Centara ensure that specific categories such as couples, families, individuals, and meetings and incentives groups will all find a hotel or resort that is appropriate to their needs. Centara operates 19 branches of Spa Cenvaree, one of Thailand's most luxurious and innovative spa brands, and the company's Kids' Club is available at all the family-friendly resorts to ensure that the youngsters and teens are taken care of. Centara Hotels & Resorts also operates two state-of-the-art convention centres in Bangkok, and one in Udon Thani in northeastern Thailand.

Low Carbon School Project

Centara Grand Beach Resort Samui is making every effort to create a "Low Carbon Island" for Samui Island. This project dovetails with the great initiative chalked up by Samui Green Island Project , Thai Hotels Association, Samui Local Municipal and 17 other hotels in Samui. This initiative will ultimately enable 11 participating schools located around Samui Island to reduce, reuse and recycle garbage, to emphasis energy conservation, to use renewable energy product applications and to establish chemical management systems.

Achievement of Green Globe Certification

Bangkok Convention Centre at Centara Grand at CentralWorld

Bangkok Convention Centre at Centara Grand at CentralWorld has successfully achieved the prestigious Green Globe Sliver Status under the Green Globe Earthcheck Certification programme managed by EC3 Global. The achievement of this Green Globe certification will drive Bangkok Convention Centre at Centara Grand at CentralWorld to a higher standard of environmental commitment.

In order to achieve this award, the key success is to accelerate the staff awareness and everyone"s involvement for their specific green actions in the daily operations of each operational area. To intensify their commitments, Bangkok Convention Centre at Centara Grand at CentralWorld has enforced their environmental responsibilities as follows:

• Low energy control system for chiller, lighting and sanitary installed throughout the hotel with ’Building Automatic System (BAS) which has its functionality designed to monitor and control the mechanical and lighting system in a building.
• Fitted flow restrictors to all showers and taps with low flush and installed a sensor system in all wash basins.
• Established towel &linen recycling programme by using "Silicone Dryer Cleaning Machine" and biodegradable chemical.
• Use of energy saving bulbs and energy efficient mini-bar refrigerators.

With this great achievement for certification, Bangkok Convention Centre will continue to strengthen its commitments to environmental and social issues in an effective, efficient and sustainable way that will ensure Bangkok Convention Centre remains at the forefront of global environmental initiatives.

2. Eco-Technology Awareness

Centara Grand Beach Resort &Villas Krabi continues to undertake recycling projects to help restore the green nature damaged by excessive use of chemical fertilizers to a fertile ground by encouraging the hotel to produce 100% organic fertilizers.

Sea-Life Conservation

Centara Grand Beach and Villas Krabi is committed to conserving the ocean by cooperating with the community and to ensure they understand about the beauty of the ocean. The Management Team of the hotel with great support from the local community is taking direct action to reduce ocean pollution and to increase healthy fisheries in the Andaman Sea.

3. Education
Centara Hotels & Resorts is dedicated to continue training and educating our employees. A wide variety of training courses are regularly provided in each property to strengthen both individual employee’s skill and excellent service delivery. Topics of training are not only aimed to provide "on the job" training responsibilities but Centara Hotels & Resorts also inspires to support various courses for environmental and social awareness.

Moreover, the Group strongly believes in educating and developing human resources. By working with communities and giving good opportunity in return, we seek to allow community members a greater future.

Youth Career Development Programme

Centara Hotels & Resorts has joined with UNICEF in order to offer career Opportunities in the hotel and service industry through the Youth Career Development Programme. Young women from poor provinces usually aged 17 to 20 will be given five months learning in the basic skills of the hotel trade such as food and beverage services, Reception, Floristry, Cooking , English Language training and other services within the hotel. Graduates can continue to work in the hotels under Centara’s umbrella after graduation. This programme has proven to be very successful since the year of 2006, Centara Hotels and Resorts have hired 92 of these students.

4. Partnership
Centara Hotels & Resorts is committed to support our good corporate governance practice and ethics with local governmental agencies, international organization and our supply chain in order to ensure our goals in accordance with environmental and sustainable awareness.

In late 2007, Centara Hotels & Resorts entered into an agreement with "Green Globe", the leading Global Benchmarking and Certification programme for the tourism and hospitality industry to achieve world certification in sustainability. "Green Globe" (GG) is to assist in reviewing and advising the Group on its sustainability standard and performance.

It is the aim of Centara Hotels & Resorts to have the majority of their hotels benchmarked with Green Globe in the next two years.

Moreover, Centara Hotels & Resorts has made an active commitment to take action against the commercial sexual exploitation of Children with a partnership with ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). The Group has officially signed the "Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation in Travel and Tourism." This code of conduct is drawn up by ECPAT and The World Tourism Organisation by setting out principles for an active policy to combat child sex tourism. By taking up this initiative, Centara Hotels & Resorts is committed to train its employees and to raise their customer’s awareness of this issue.

5. Product
Centara Hotels & Resorts aspires to be conscientious in the process of procurement, production, equipment and service delivery. We also seek to maximize our awareness of sourcing of locally and sustainable products which are recyclable and non harmful to our environment.

The Group is now starting to formulate a more consistent Group-wide guideline for suppliers to share our sustainability vision and to ensure their cooperation. We attempt to enhance our procurement and to develop criteria for new purchases. We take into account energy saving, water – efficiency, durability and organic products. Another Group-wide strategy is to work with "Ecolab" to use biodegradable products and to reduce chemical use through adoption of products that require less energy and water for cleaning.

Our SPA Cenvaree is also strongly committed to Centara Hotels & Resorts sustainability journey. Our SPA Cenvaree products are also made from 100% natural ingredients and environmental-friendly features.