Green Initiatives
One vital position to recruit for early on was director of engineering, with Rohit Salunke being the man tasked with finding environmentally friendly irrigation solutions for 27,000m2 of landscaped area.
“The building has a recycling process in place, where even the AC condensation is recycled into the landscaping irrigation system so there is no wastage of real water. Based on the weather and the requirement, the irrigation system comes on — so it saves on water — it’s connected to a timer but based on the weather, when the ambient temperature goes high, the irrigation cycle will increase,” explains Salunke.
“To further energy consumption, the right approach is to first monitor the energy, see where your highest consumption is, and then use corrective measures for the lighting, and water features when you want it operational without affecting the guest experience. At the end of the day the guest experience counts more than the cost saving,” he asserts.
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With the resort open, Salunke is now busy working on implementing Sofitel’s Planet 21 initiative at the property, and future plans include working towards achieving a Green Globe certification as well as various HACCP certifications.
Next on the agenda for Schnyder and his team is building on the resort’s current momentum. He seems confident that with a new marketing campaign that will launch soon, the brand will continue to garner interest. “Our operational priority is to streamline the processes – make them as seamless as possible and ensure consistency in as little time as possible.
At the end of the day if your systems work, if your processes work, that means you minimise the guest inconvenience, you minimise guest complaints and then you have positive word of mouth comments. So that’s really my priority,” he states.
“From a business perspective, to have a running hotel open for only three months and hitting high occupancy numbers is quite fabulous. Like during Eid, the hotel building already achieved 85% occupancy. So during the high season towards the end of the year, we expect some peaks where we will achieve 100% occupancy definitely,” he concludes.
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