Interview: Hilton Abu Dhabi's CSR champ

Hilton Abu Dhabi environment, health, safety and hygiene manager Evangelos Karakoulias explains the group’s CSR mission

What is Travel with Purpose?
Travel with Purpose is Hilton Worldwide’s global CSR project, and one of our four values is “living sustainably”, which we prioritise with several campaigns and tools such as EcoRewards.

How does the EcoRewards programme work?
The EcoRewards sustainability campaign rewards Hilton hotels whose team members are making the greatest contribution to environmentally-friendly operations and are the most sustainably active. Throughout the year, the hotels are awarded points for complying with Lightstay, participating in sustainability events in the community, training compliance and external recognition.

How did Hilton Abu Dhabi achieve the highest rankING in the region so far?
There were several environmental initiatives and projects which took place in our hotel such as ghaf tree planting, beach cleaning, awareness for in-house guests, and celebrating international events such as Earth Hour. Another great achievement was the 27% reduction of our general waste for 2013 and we were also recently awarded the Blue Flag award, making us the first Hilton property to achieve this international beach certification. It is, of course, our aim to maintain the flag for 2014-2015.