Banyan Tree renews ties with Earthcheck

Banyan Tree Group has signed two key agreements, reaffirming its commitment to sustainable tourism development.

The commercialised arm of Banyan Tree, GPS Development Services (GPS), which provides development and technical expertise internally within the Group as well as to external parties, signed a memorandum of understanding with EC3 Global, the international environmental management and certification company that owns and manages the EarthCheck program.

As the first Singapore-based company to officially partner with EC3 Global, GPS is now able to deliver end-to-end sustainable tourism development services and expertise to external parties, overseeing the entire process.

Commenting on the partnership, Stewart Moore, CEO of EC3 Global and EarthCheck, said “The sustainability challenges of tomorrow will demand a new set of professional design skills and innovation”.

“The partnership with GPS will offer our clients an integrated set of planning and design solutions,” he added.

Through their successful implementation of sustainable projects for Banyan Tree’s portfolio of properties, GPS will leverage on their expertise in project planning, development management, green technical advisory and engineering technology, while EC3 Global will contribute its expertise on engaged destination management, building and precinct planning and design standards, community and destination master planning and certification.

The company added that the partnership represented “a key milestone for Banyan Tree” as it enables GPS to leverage on EC3 Global’s extensive portfolio of over 1,300 hospitality and travel clients in 73 countries, bringing additional revenue streams to the Group.

“With this alliance, GPS is able to ramp up its pipeline of external clients in new markets and work together with EC3 to offer a multidisciplinary team that can provide end-to-end solutions for our clients,” said Lim See Bee, executive director of GPS.

“This partnership also enables GPS to provide confidence to development approval agencies that all aspects of the project have been considered through an independent assessment of sustainability performance.”

In the second agreement signed, Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts renewed their partnership with EarthCheck, confirming an on-going commitment to sustainable operations with year-on-year performance measurement verified by a third party and scientific reporting to an international standard.

C3 Global owns and manages the EarthCheck benchmarking and certification program that assists businesses in the travel and tourism sector to monitor and reduce their environmental impacts in the core areas of energy, water, waste, community, paper, cleaning and pesticides.

Building on its existing sustainability programme, Banyan Tree will continue extending the Group’s participation in EarthCheck, with a view to have Banyan Tree and Angsana branded resorts certified and supported by expanded capacity building frameworks.

CEO, Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts, Abid Butt, said the company was “encouraged by the performance of our resorts”.

“We are enthusiastic about the market intelligence EarthCheck’s data provides which allows us to continue working to be a leader within sustainable tourism,” he added.