Winner was Anthony Lark of Trisara, who left Ty Collins, GM of the JW Marriott Khao Lak, and Morgan Layberry, EAM of the Holiday Inn Patong, trailing in his wake.
Granted, he had a big advantage in the competition: he was with Trisara when it was but a glint in the owners’ eyes, and could help steer the new resort to greenness.
This was not a choice of “Do we or don’t we?”. The designers of Trisara were compelled, when putting together their plans, to think ultra-green.
This was to be an ultra-luxury complex (with all the potentially non-green requirements of the wealthy guests) surrounded by old-growth forest, and the owners and management knew the environmental impact assessment was going to be particularly tough.
Mr Lark pointed out, “The travel industry is the biggest polluter, with airlines and hotel waste. Is the [Thai] government ready to incentivise [green practises]? I don’t think so. So it’s up to private enterprise.”
That in turn means justifying green practices not in terms of complying with the law, nor in terms of righteousness, but in terms of return on investment (RoI).
All three hoteliers gave useful insights into how hotels can become considerably greener with comparatively minor changes in hotel or partner working practices, and how more significant spending can be justified by showing short periods for RoI.
Mr Layberry said, for example, “We’re trying to get suppliers to eliminate much of the packaging. We will buy reusable crates with our name on them for use by the suppliers. It saves them money.”
The Holiday Inn has also changed all incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents, and the laundry runs only full loads, cutting water and electricity wastes.
“Just these quick and easy changes have saved us about US$10,000 [B300,000] a month.”
In Khao Lak, the Marriott is working with consultants Ecolab on cold temperature cleaning in the laundry, which cuts the power bill and also extends the life of linen.
The scale of some of the problems faced in going greener was epitomised by bottled drinking water.
At Trisara, Mr Lark said, the hotel was consuming more than 250, 000 bottles – all plastic – each year. The other speakers admitted to the same problem, both on a larger scale.
“It tastes like chlorine, it’s trucked in and then the bottles are trucked out again to the landfill,” said Mr Lark, “so we are building a reverse osmosis system.
“The plant is costing B1 million – about a third of the price of a Volvo – and the RoI is just nine months.” Plastic bottles are out: “We have our own reusable glass bottles.”
He offered the due diligence and research on then reverse osmosis plant to anyone else who might think it useful.
Water in general is a major issue at Trisara, which has no source on-site, and none coming in from outside apart from in tankers.
“Eighty per cent of the water we use in the high season goes on the landscaping. We worked out that we would need two tankers driving up and down all day at a ridiculous cost.”
So built into Trisara was a system for collecting rain water from all the roofs. “That’s added to the grey water and then used on the gardens through sprinklers.”
Mr Collins, a little enviously, remarked, “You can do a lot at the building stage.”
But, he added, “There are so many opportunities out there to change things now. Technology is changing fast. Solar energy, for example, is very close to becoming competitive.”
All three hoteliers offered additional insights that may help owners and other managers to become more green.
Local sourcing – the “kilo zero” transport theory (Mr Layberry): “We’re moving towards more locally produced food items instead of imports,” Mr Layberry explained. “We want to look at sustainable food sources, particularly seafood.”
Hotel value (Mr Lark): “All hotels are for sale. Becoming greener makes the hotel more saleable.” Part of the incentive is that “guests will make the decisions. A lot of clients will demand this of expensive hotels.”
Do it now (Mr Layberry): “We must convince owners to invest a little bit [in green practices] every year rather than waiting until legislation forces us to do it all at once. It’s easy to explain on a financial basis.”
Awareness of others’ interests (Mr Collins): “We practised separation and recycling, but then the local garbage collector would not collect because we were taking all the valuable stuff out of the trash. So now we still separate it, but then we give it to them.”
The moderator for the event was Arnfinn Oines, Social & Environmental Conscience with Six Senses/Soneva Resorts.