The Park Hyatt Maldives – a perfect example for Green Growth and Quality

The Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa is a classic positive example of what the International Coalition of Tourism Partners is assisting members to achieve. The Maldives Hyatt Resort recently joined ICTP [ www.ictp.travel ] as a new member.

The Park Hyatt Hadahaa is Hyatt’s only 5- star luxury hotel in the Maldives. The resort is situated on a pristine island 400 kilometers south of Male and 56 kilometers north of the Equator in the North Huvadhoo (Gaafu Alifu) Atoll, one of the largest and deepest atolls in the world.

Prior to the Park Hyatt Hadahaa joining the International Coalition of Tourism Partners, ICTP chairman Juergen Thomas Steinmetz (also publisher of eTN) stayed at the resort on a private vacation.

Steinmetz commented: “Spending almost 150 nights a year in hotels and resorts, this is the ultimate experience. I was truly impressed. I am very pleased the Park Hyatt Maldives joined our coalition of likeminded destinations and stakeholders. My stay at the Park Hyatt was fully paid by me and booked on the Hyatt website. It was not a hosted fam trip and the ICTP membership is complimentary for one year. Likeminded hotels and resorts can contact ICTP to also receive an invitation for a complimentary membership.”

ICTP recently asked Ciara McCarten, the resident Marine Biologist and Earth Check Coordinator of the resort about their vision on Green Growth and Quality.

Green Growth and Quality – what does it mean for you?

From its inception, environmental and socially sustainable initiatives have been regarded as an integral part of Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa’s operational culture.

This vastly unexplored area is home to stunning coral reefs, indigenous fish species, and remote islands where the humble Maldivian way of life centers on the sea and its resources. We acknowledge that a 50 villa island resort, with several food and beverage outlets, an active dive center and spa in the midst of an extremely isolated and pristine tropical atoll poses a risk to the surrounding area and its people.

This has empowered us to dedicate our resources to protect this unique and fragile environment. Being environmentally conscious is especially important in this atoll and in the Maldives as a whole, since the rising water levels would have devastating effects on this country first and foremost. Although green initiatives and sustainability are core values to Hyatt, they are also equally as important to our owners who were instrumental in developing best practices in sustainability from day one. Great care has been taken during the design and construction stage to preserve the natural vegetation in order to maintain the ambiance of the island with environmental awareness and protection being key considerations in all our guest experiences.

The resort was built after a stringent environmental impact assessment and was the first property in the world to use the EarthCheck Planning & Design Standard. We are also committed to minimizing our environmental footprint and have done this in collaboration with EarthCheck the world’s leading environmental sustainability benchmarking and certification programs. Together our goal is to maximize guest experience while minimizing environmental and social footprint. We strive to surpass Best Practice benchmarking levels and continually improve upon the existing environmental and social sustainability performance, whilst assuring the quality of product we are supplying is set at the highest level.

Achieve market share through Green Growth and Quality – your ideas and your policies.

We are striving to be the most desired eco-luxury resort in the Maldives, for our guests and our staff. From the moment one steps on to our island our environmental awareness is made apparent, as all of our staff are proud of the sustainability initiatives that we are practicing and are more than happy to share their environmental knowledge with guests.

Our initiatives include:

Energy & Carbon

The resort’s method of power generation and energy use benefited from being subjected to an energy audit (EarthCheck). Whilst the primary energy source for the project is via four diesel generators, power savings are achieved by using demand management and automated control systems. Further, the generators used are new breed, high speed, efficient models with low emission ratings and the heat exhaust is recycled to heat the hot water supply for the entire resort.

We use a highly efficient incinerator (TeamTec incinerator model GS500C) to incinerate waste that is then to be sent to landfill. This incinerator has been chosen due to its reduced Nitrogen oxide emissions, a harmful GHG which is emitted through waste incineration.

To reduce energy consumption within our laundry we invite our guests to partake in our conserve program where we will only change their linen every other day. We also have reduced the need for paper by having our hotel compendiums on iPads in each villa. Our in villa iPads also offer information on sustainable initiatives and ways to conserve the environment. We also suggest that our guests should do something to offset their own carbon footprint which would have been greatly increased by travelling here.

The design of the resort allows for minimal lighting required, all rooms are open plan with large windows to allow for sunlight to light the room in daylight hours. In conjunction we operate day light savings, our Island time is 1hr ahead of Male time, which allows for maximizing natural lighting. Wherever lighting is necessary across the resort, we use energy efficient LED bulbs. We do also use downward lighting in all our pathways to minimize light pollution on the Island.

Water

All of the properties portable water consumption is derived initially from a reverse osmosis desalination plant.

Correspondingly drinking water is also produced this way and bottled in our onsite bottling plant, thus eliminating the need to import mineral water for guests and staff. Glass reusable and recyclable bottles are used across the resort, reducing unnecessary waste of PET bottles by an estimated 100,000 bottles a year. To ensure that there is no direct sewerage discharge into the ground or ocean and to prevent contamination, waste water is treated in an onsite water treatment plant and the grey water is used for toilet flushing and irrigation.

Education & training

All staff are initially trained in Hyatt orientation training this includes Hyatt history and brand standards, as well as all the sustainable approaches the resort is taking to further decreasing our environmental footprint. Staff are also trained by the resident marine biologist on EarthCheck core benchmarking indicators which include: CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions, portable water consumption, waste management, social commitment, and the ecological importance of our surrounding environment.

Community

We recognize that our resort has an impact on the communities within our atoll and we are focused to maintain this as a positive impact. At present 55% of our staff are Maldivian and 34% come from with a 50 km radius. Correspondingly we adhere to try and source goods locally when available, however 70% of our perishable goods come from within Maldives.

Our contribution and continual commitment to our neighboring communities is undertaken by our Hyatt Thrive committee.

Initiatives include but are not limited to:

Working with local schools to develop work experience programs for local children. These include: CV writing sessions, practicing different skills from different hospitality departments such as housekeeping and F&B. 32 Children from two local schools have recently been invited on to the resort for one day to fully experience how all the departments work.

We are developing cost price scuba training/certification for local fisherman and have had PADI Open Water training books translated into Divehi. We have previously carried out workshops to educate on safe practices in terms of scuba diving.

For Earth Day this year we ran two projects, firstly we undertook a tree plantation drive on a local island (Dhaandhoo) and an Island clean up on a local island Kooddoo. Our Hyatt thrive committee and staff volunteers went across to both Islands and spent the day there.

Events

We hold weekly earth hour dinners, where all guest are invited to enjoy dinner by candle light, to reduce our energy consumption from lighting.

We recently carried out a World Ocean day event which included: a detailed presentation from our Marine Biologist on our marine environment here in the Maldives as well as conservation issues which directly affect us and best practices for mitigating these. We also invited all our staff to make ocean day pledges to do one small thing for the year to help conserve our marine environment.