Torque macaques smugly enjoy their spoils on the balcony, when an intimidated guest retreats from his snacks to the safety of his room, behind the sliding glass door. It happens a lot, says Ranjith Kumarasinghe, Manager Learning & Development at Heritance Kandalama, with a smile. “We have to remind guests to keep doors closed, otherwise the monkeys come into the rooms looking for food. After all this was their territory first.” Such a sympathetic response, to the monkeys is emblematic of the sustainability ethos of this iconic hotel. Designed by Geoffrey Bawa to nestle unobtrusively in the landscape alongside the Kandalama reservoir, from where it also gets its name, the hotel has long been a pioneer of sustainable practices. Now, when the discourse around sustainability in business is not about whether to practice it, or how to implement it – but on how to do better, businesses are increasingly recognising something Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings, Heritance hotel’s parent company, has known for a while – the value of employee engagement.
FROM DAY ONE
At Heritance Kandalama sustainability engagement begins as even before staff join the team. During the recruitment, applicants are asked to discuss ‘the importance of a tree’ as a simple exercise in gaging how eco-conscious they are. During a five day induction for new hires sustainability practices are front and centre. As well as the usual trainings on discipline, employee development and customer care, new hires are taught about the 7Rs – Reject, Reduce, Reuse, Reclaim, Repair, Replace and Recycle – and the organisational 7S productivity initiatives. Sustainability was at the heart of Bawa’s design and it remains central to the business model, Kumarasinghe explains, “This is a five start hotel, but it is not a rich hotel. We promote intelligent luxury and this can be appreciated only by people who love the environment and value sustainability concepts. So these concepts, which the hotel is built on, have to be in the blood of our employees.”
During employee training, performance appraisals and monthly selection of the most outstanding team member, sustainability concepts play a central role. For management, one of five operational goals set for each department head and executive is based on sustainability. As 20% of their performance is dictated by success in sustainability practices they cannot afford complacency. Executives often espouse how much they want to engage with sustainability but putting it into practice can be a different matter. By generating enthusiasm among staff and aligning performance to these, progress can be made much faster.
One of the success areas at Heritance Kandalama is the zero waste approach that involves treating waste not as garbage, but a raw material with economic value. ‘Waste’ is separated into 21 categories on site and sold to vendors who pay a premium for receiving only the type of material they want. Every month around Rs75,000 is generated, which funds employee led welfare projects in the areas surrounding the hotel. As it’s managed by employees the scheme motivates staff to engage. Employee involvement with a company’s sustainability culture generates full circle benefits.
Engaged individuals bring new perspectives and see opportunities that others have missed. For example, in the restaurant at the Kandalama hotel, waiters suggested reducing the size of the paper sugar packets so less paper was used. From a head office point of view this might seem like an insignificant adjustment, but these staff were cleaning up volumes of paper waste every day; it may be small, but there’s a long term impact.
TRAVELLERS’ EXPECTATIONS
A recent survey by hospitality insights company STR found that choosing an environmentally friendly holiday was important to 48% of respondents and unimportant to just 12%. Yet 60% of those surveyed felt hotels and accommodation providers were making little to no efforts towards sustainability. Tour operators and travel agents have recognised the swing towards eco-consciousness and are demanding certifications and qualifications from the hotels they choose to partner with.
For Priyan Wijerathne, General Manager at Heritance Kandalama, the maturity of the hotel is a testament to the value guests place in its green credentials.
“In this industry, it’s not easy to sustain client interest over a long period of time. In 25 years we’ve renovated just once. The ongoing popularity of our product, despite this, is an indication of how much people appreciate Geoffrey Bawa’s vision and the sustainability practices at the heart of the hotel.” Heritance Kandalama’s many accreditations include being the first Green Globe 21 certified hotel in Asia, the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified hotel in the world and the first hotel chain in the world to have a certified energy management system.
A FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN
Heritance Kandalama’s journey wasn’t smooth. The proposal to construct the hotel only meters from the high water mark of the reservoir was met with outrage by people living in the area. Many worried about the project’s impact on the water table and the negative influence of foreign tourists on the rural idyll. Ranjith Kumarasinghe was recruited from the local school into the first batch of 40 trainees and remembers well the protest and the concern among his fellow villagers. “My own father was against the hotel. We knew about the corruption of society in tourist places like Hikkaduwa, the pollution of the beaches and the drugs that accompanied the tourists. This was the tourism we had seen and we didn’t want that for our area,” he recalls. A protest was held, after which Aitken Spence began visiting the communities to educate about the realities of the project.
“They promised not to hire any employees from outside the area, to develop the local infrastructure, to build tube wells, sanitation facilities in schools, and libraries. That’s how they won the hearts of the villagers.”
By the time the hotel opened Kumarasinghe says the negative sentiments and fears had been laid to rest. It is a story of success that the areas of most concern to locals during the planning and construction stages – environmental, social and cultural – have become the pillars upon which the business built its sustainability credentials. As the manager of learning and development, Kumarasinghe drives the employee engagement and delivers the promises made almost thirty years ago to people in the area. The hotel hires school leavers who were not born when the protests took place, so Kumarasinghe makes a point of educating them on the hotel’s history so they understand the impact it has had, and how precious that symbiotic relationship with the community, and the environment is.
Heritance Kandalama doesn’t use solar power, previously installed panels having been destroyed by the macaques, and still relies on plastic bottles for guests’ water in rooms. Wijerathne says the hotel is hoping to change both of these following the upcoming renovations, although plans are uncertain because of turbulence the industry has experienced since April 2019. Despite the challenges facing it, wherever a company is on its sustainability journey, it can always go further. Developing a solid culture of sustainability and employee engagement is a key step any business, in any industry, can take to make a difference.