sustainability ambassadors
At RIU we believe that sustainability and social innovation are the pillars of our CSR and those that mark the responsible identity of our human team. Each and every one of our collaborators are the creators of the sustainable awareness that characterizes this company since its beginnings and those who have guided its step towards a more responsible business with the environment and the community. Sustainability professionals, employees and guests in the 19 countries where our hotels are located, are today our sustainability ambassadors and the true architects of this gradual and responsible change that RIU Hotels is experiencing.
Get to know our team and their work as ambassadors for the company’s sustainability in this series of tribunes and testimonials:
Catalina Alemany
For a sustainable hotel industry
May 2022. Over the company’s almost 70 years in the tourism industry, the entire human team of RIU Hotels, from the owners right down to the newest members of staff, have worked to “be better”. However, “being better” does not mean a competition with other companies to see who can have more hotels, more rooms, or the best customers. Instead, it refers to our desire to improve, evolve and learn in order to reach our goal: offering our customers the best possible service so they come back and stay with us again, while also looking after the local society and environment surrounding our hotels.
By no means has this been easy. This challenge is forcing us to undertake a complete internal transformation, and we hope that this process will create cross-company corporate social responsibility that becomes part of our DNA. As the department leading this internal evolution, we are working towards a better hotel and tourism model not just for our customers, who are and will always be our raison d’être, but also for each and every person on our planet
Thanks to this slow but steady progress towards a mature identity, we have learnt that this does not just involve building a hotel and driving the destination’s economy, but also ensuring the well-being of the people who are impacted by our activity. However, we cannot do this alone; RIU, its team and its allies must all work together.
This is the case of our alliance with the Red Cross. Thanks to its support, we have had a significant impact on local communities in destinations such as Spain or Mexico, and we are also working together to provide emergency aid during the ongoing war in Ukraine. In Madrid, we are working with the Spanish Red Cross on a project called “Digital education and positive parenthood”, which aims to give children, teenagers and their families access to technological devices. We provide socioeconomic support and ensure that families have the equipment they need to improve their skills and abilities and thereby help create equal opportunities.
During 2020, we worked alongside the Mexican Red Cross to alleviate the effects of COVID-19 in the state of Quintana Roo and cover immediate needs in the area. For example, we created a call centre for possible COVID-19 cases, launched a prevention campaign aimed at the entire local population and purchased medicines and medical material.
Lastly, in Ukraine we have entrusted the Red Cross with providing humanitarian support in the conflict zone. It collects financial resources from our collaborators and Red Cross teams working on the ground and in Spain then provide humanitarian support.
With projects like these, RIU and many other companies create a positive change that goes much further than the economic domain. The global economy must adapt to a new era in which the decision-making model has changed, because we can no longer focus solely on our income statement while turning our back on society’s needs. It is our responsibility to look towards the future and consider all of the environmental and social situations that we can influence, and then put all our efforts into improving them.
Catalina Alemany. Manager of CSR at RIU Hotels & Resorts.
Juan Domenech
RIU takes a step forward in energy monitoring in its hotels
RIU Hotels is committed to the environment and works to implement the required measures within the company to reach the established sustainable development goals.
This commitment has given rise to one of the company’s most ambitious energy projects. In addition to creating a specific department in charge of defining the strategies we must follow to meet the requirements of today’s world, we have also launched the implementation of a corporate energy monitoring system. This project will be fully carried out by RIU’s staff in hotels.
Additionally, RIU is going one step further in the new builds and refurbishments that it continues to plan despite the pandemic. Large energy consumers such as kitchens, restaurants, industrial areas and specific machinery will also be monitored in these new buildings.
By monitoring energy throughout the company, we can make strategic, objective and uniform decisions as regards contracts and facilities. In addition, having a high level of control over critical areas in terms of energy savings will allow us to avoid lights being left on in areas that are empty at certain times or make it possible to rapidly locate water leaks, for example. What’s more, it will be much simpler to define maintenance and energy efficiency checks for our machinery.
Similarly, if we know the characteristics of our supply contracts (green origin certificates) and the renewable production ratios of our energy providers, we can enter this data into the platform to calculate our emissions and carbon footprint and define the average emissions per client in each of our hotels.
All of these actions have the ultimate aim of defining a benchmark hotel model that will make us a global leader in the sustainable tourism sector.
Juan Domenech.
Analyst RIU Hotels & Resorts Energy Area
Shannon Sutherland
Working together to restore Sal’s coastal ecosystems
Think about your last beach vacation. Imagine the warm glow of the sun on your face, the calming sound of the waves crashing along the shore – the perfect way to relax and restore your mind, body and spirit. There’s another essential piece of the landscape that you may not remember: the presence (or absence) of rolling sand dunes just behind you.
Though often thought of as merely the backdrop for a good beach day, sand dunes play an important role in maintaining healthy coastal ecosystems. Not only do they serve as a home for many unique species of plants and terrestrial wildlife, they also are instrumental in protecting inland areas from flooding and incoming storms. Sand dunes also serve as an essential barrier against light pollution from coastal developments, which can deter sea turtles from nesting, as well as disorient hatchlings that emerge from the nest, ultimately impacting their survival. Unfortunately, in high tourism destinations like Sal, coastal ecosystems suffer from increasing pressure due to coastal development, sand extraction, and unregulated vehicle use throughout the dune area.
The iconic stretch of beach known as Costa Fragata is no exception. A hotspot for wind and kitesurfing, it is also home to a number of native and endemic plants, many of which are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It also provides an essential habitat for the endangered loggerhead sea turtle, who comes to the beach to nest from June-October. Increasing degradation from high pressure tourist activities such as quad bike tours and unregulated wildlife excursions has left this ecosystem and others like it severely depleted and unable to recover without conservation intervention.
The success of that intervention depends on many contributors, but the star is a small but sturdy shrub called the Senegalese tamarisk, known locally as the Tarrafe. Like many coastal plants, it is well suited to dry windy environments – it grows low to the ground to reduce sand movement in high winds and its strong root system allows for continued growth even when parts are uprooted.
In Cabo Verde it is so emblematic that many areas throughout the archipelago are named after the plant (Tarrafal). This species has a very important role in coastal ecosystems as it helps build and strengthen large dunes. In Sal, it was traditionally used for firewood before the development of the island, which caused dramatic reduction in its population. As a result, it is now a protected species.
Together with our partners at RIU Hotels, Protected Areas, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, we established an initiative to reintroduce the Tarrafe to local ecosystems, through the creation of a plant nursery on the beachfront of the RIU Palace in Santa Maria. With the help of staff, local authorities and visitors to the hotel, we have planted over 200 seedlings. Once they have grown to a suitable size, we will then replant them along the coast to support the regeneration of local dune ecosystems.
These dune ecosystems can only thrive if residents and visitors alike maintain the integrity of the ecosystems. So, what does this mean for that beach vacation you’re planning? First, it is important to follow designated pathways, and avoid trampling on the dunes and vegetation just behind the beach. If you plan to go on a quad bike or any other vehicle-based tour, make sure the company conducts tours responsibly, and also follows the designated paths – and don’t forget to to leave the beach just as you found it – or even cleaner!
Shannon Sutherland
Projeto Biodiversidade Communications Manager
Pedro López
For more sustainable whale-watching
If we had to define a concept for resolving the eternal conflict between environmental conservation and economic development, that concept would be none other than sustainability and rational use of resources. The humpback whale currently represents one of the main tourist attractions of Cape Verde. A population of just a few hundred individuals of this species reproduces every year in the coastal waters of islands like Boa Vista and Maio between February and June. Over the last 10 years, thousands of visitors to Boa Vista have contemplated one of the ocean’s most iconic animals.
For the NGO Bios.CV, the sustainability of this fragile resource requires declaration of a zone for the protection of mothers and their young off the west coast of Boa Vista, adoption of a code of good practices by operators of whale watching excursions, and greater involvement and support from tourism agents in monitoring and conservation activities for this population in danger of extinction.
Pedro López
Director of the BIOS whale conservation program
Lola Trián Riu
The internal transformation of RIU hotels
After a year like 2020, in which our business has been put to the test and we have had to adapt to continuous change, it seems that a road towards an unprecedented transformation has opened up at RIU Hotels as well. In record time, many significant changes have taken place in our hotels and services, such as creating and incorporating new sanitization-health protocols to cope with COVID-19, training the entire active staff to apply these measures as effectively as possible, and reopening hotels, the first ones in many destinations and with strict safety protocols (masks, partitions, etc.). Unfortunately, some hotels had to close when flights to our destinations were limited, establishments that later reopened for just weeks before having to close their doors again due to lack of customers.
Just thinking about the work this has meant for our teams, I can’t help feeling deep respect and admiration for all the people who have made it possible with hard work and dedication. They have made the difference in a year of constant challenges, and they should take pride in this. But it hasn’t been easy. When we had to send our staff home for months, morale deteriorated and we sensed an atmosphere of discouragement among us. It was inevitable.
However, the vaccination process is underway, it seems that we can recover our good cheer thanks to that slight uptick in bookings over Easter, with which we have reopened in destinations as popular as Cape Verde. But we can’t stand still. We need to recover our enthusiasm with new projects that excite us, without forgetting the scenario in which we find ourselves. In this sense, and in the Corporate Social Responsibility area, we are generating actions and projects designed to make our business model more sustainable through long-term circular economy strategies. Above all, because the pandemic has shown us in stark relief that we cannot ignore the challenges of climate change facing us. We cannot continue extracting resources as if there were no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow for our children, and because we cannot ask these new generations to pay for the errors of past generations. It’s everybody’s responsibility. And so, the best internal transformation we can undertake is to open up a road to a more responsible, sustainable and increasingly circular form of hospitality. That would be the best bet in the years ahead of us for recovering a battered hospitality industry and transforming it into something better than it was before the pandemic.
Lola Trián Riu
Sustainability Director in the RIU Corporate Social Responsibility Area
Catalina Alemany
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Catalina Alemany, Corporate Social Responsibility Director |
Trust and dialogue have built our CSRIn recent years, RIU has experienced a period of major changes, in which we have implemented a new decision-making model for CSR which has been a priceless lesson for us all. If I had to summarise in a single word the fruit of these last twelve months, I would say it had to be TRUST. The trust we have placed in our academic, our sustainability ambassadors and voluntary sector partners in this important period, the trust that our stakeholders have earned by discovering the importance of dialogue and long-term alliances, and the trust that we inspire in our customers by offering them more responsible holidays. We are facing new challenges, such as improving some of the indicators in which our performance has not been satisfactory over the last year, or measuring the results of our projects and, above all, increasing our capacity to generate well-being in the local community. These are not easy times, but we start from the privileged position of a job well done and with an unstoppable team, led by our sustainability ambassadors, we know that we will slowly but surely achieve the goals we set ourselves. |
TESTIMONIALS FROM OUR AMBASSADORS
