Sustainability Spotlight: Hilton Worldwide, RAK
Hilton Worldwide’s Ras Al Khaimah properties held a beach and ocean clean-up during the group’s annual Global Week of Service. Hotelier speaks to the team to find out more about the Travel with Purpose programme, and what sustainability means for them
Hilton Worldwide developed its corporate social responsibility programme, Travel with Purpose, in 2011 to focus on creating a cohesive yet flexible framework to guide the activities of the group across its various brands and properties around the world.
As part of its corporate sustainability programme, Hilton Worldwide hosts a week-long event called Global Week of Service at its properties around the world.
While nearly all properties participate in community and sustainability-related events globally, the group also hosts 12 signature events, one of which was organised by Hilton’s Ras Al Khaimah properties.
Explaining the concept, Hilton Worldwide Europe, Middle East & Africa corporate responsibility manager Caroline Meledo, who participated in the Ras Al Khaimah event, says: “A signature event is an one where you get the attendance of our leaders, where you get the support from our public relations team, and the support of my time and experience across the world to really elevate an approach.”
The signature event in Ras Al Khaimah featured a beach and sea clean up, where more than 100 volunteers — including hotel staff from Hilton Worldwide properties in the emirate, high school students, professional divers from PADI, and members of the local community — took to the emirate’s beaches and ocean to clear rubbish and debris.
Following on from the ocean clean up, Hilton has partnered with PADI’s Project Aware campaign to make sense of where the rubbish came from, and ways to combat the problem of waste.
Meledo explains: “We are looking at issues that are way bigger than who we are. However big Hilton is, we are not going to solve the problem of the oceans by ourselves.
“So in everything we do, we try and establish partnerships with the experts; they bring the expertise, and we bring the platform and the manpower.
“For instance, in Asia we have a partnership with WWF for sustainable fish, and here we are exploring the opportunity to work with PADI a bit more closely, looking at the concepts of sustainability and conservation, and preservation of the seas where we welcome our guests.”
Meledo also illustrates how the partnership with PADI will help the group understand how the rubbish gets into the ocean in the first place, and how Hilton can help curtail littering.
“With PADI’s Project Aware campaign, the point is to raise awareness of where the rubbish comes from, and ultimately to prevent it from getting into the sea in the first place. We shouldn’t have to clean it out of the ocean, we should be preventing it from getting in there.
“What we can do is raise awareness among our team, our guests, and within our local community on why it’s important to protect the sea. We have a stake in doing that, because who wants to come to our hotels, however beautiful they are, if the beach is full of trash? So when we talk about living sustainably in the communities where we live, work, and travel, this is it; this is what we are talking about.”
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The bigger picture
When it comes to sustainability, Meledo asserts the Global Week of Service does not mean the group’s sustainability and community initiatives are just one-off events.
“When we think about sustainability, it’s not just about recycling a can here or turning off the tap there; it’s not about reducing laundry and linen. We are looking at the engine here —we are talking about the industry as having an impact, both positive and negative.
“And that’s the trick… if you only continue to have a negative impact, you’re not going to be sustainable, you’re not going to get the numbers, and you will not be able to continue operating in the long term, so you also need to leverage the positive impact.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Hilton Worldwide president Middle East and Africa Rudi Jagersbacher, who was also present at the event in Ras Al Khaimah to help divers clean the debris from the ocean floor.
He says: “That’s what tourism is about — longevity, and we want to be at the forefront with our sustainability efforts. Most big companies go into a certain location, make as much money as possible, and then move on. We don’t; we are part of the community, and therefore we have responsibilities.”
To drive the group’s Living Sustainably agenda, all Hilton Worldwide properties have to adhere to the group’s four pillars of corporate responsibility through sub-committees that focus on aspects such as team members, guests, sustainability, and the community.
“We have invested in that structure because we know it drives guest satisfaction, it drives sustainability, and the resilience of the engine, and ultimately it drives business; so it’s a win-win,” Meledo asserts.
In 2014, the Living Sustainably campaigns focused on different parts of the environment each quarter. For Q1 it was resources, followed by energy in Q2, water in Q3, and waste in Q4.
As part of the campaign, hotels are provided with checklists for every aspect of the operation across various departments. Additionally, the corporate offices provide support through competitions, suggestions, and toolkits to run the sustainability committees that are most relevant to individual properties.
“We are strict about the fact that it should be strategic, but not so much so that it prevents creativity. Emille came up with this idea herself, and that’s the kind of platform and enabling environment that our cultural committees encourage,” Meledo says, pointing to team member Emille Artigas, who organised the signature event.
Convinced that the partnership with PADI will be beneficial for both parties, Meledo also reveals the group will continue working with PADI’s non-profit arm, Project Aware, to expand the ocean clean-up campaign to other locations such as Dubai and Fujairah, as well as other regions.
“We are here for the long term. We’ve been here for 100 years and we want to be around for another 100 years. And for that to happen, we need to think carefully about what we really depend on to make that happen, and the environment and communities are a part of it; it’s part of the engine,” Meledo concludes.
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Ras Al Khaimah Sea and beach clean up
Held in October 2014, the signature event in Ras Al Khaimah saw more than 100 volunteers from the hotel group’s properties, as well as 40 residents from the emirate, participate in the event to clean beaches, including 40 divers, who cleaned the ocean floor off the coast of the emirate.
Equipped with diving equipment, rubbish bags and gloves, the divers collected more than 100kg of litter from 2km of the seabed during the two-hour underwater clean-up. On land, the volunteers cleared a 1km stretch of Marjan Island Beach, contributing 325kg to the impressive haul of rubbish.
Emille Argitas, a Hilton Worldwide team member who organised the event, says: “As an avid scuba diver, I have seen both worlds. Whenever we do clean ups, we only look at the surface, and hardly anyone thinks of the underwater world. Through our Global Week of Service signature event, we seek to make a positive impact on the future of tourism in RAK. We are seeing an increase in the number of diving tourists, and Marjan Island has a lot to offer.”
In association with PADI Project Aware, team members mapped out an area to be covered. RAK Tourism was also involved early on to promote the dive sites among tourists and residents in the emirate.
Once permits were secured from the emirate’s environmental department, the event was promoted to local Ras Al Khaimah and UAE volunteers, as well as hotel guests at Hilton Worldwide properties in the emirate through in-room notices.
In the run up to the event, the team prepared all the diving equipment and held pre-dive briefings to ensure safety of all the participants. Once the dive and beach clean ups were concluded, the debris was weighed, recorded, and submitted to PADI for research and to support long-term cleaning efforts.
Global week of service around the world
Throughout Global Week of Service, Hilton properties around the world worked with an international network of community-based organisations in addition to more than 2800 local organisations selected by hotels and offices.
• More than 370 volunteers from 14 Hilton Worldwide properties across the UAE, Qatar and Oman collaborated with environmental agencies, tour operators and residents to organise underwater, beach, desert, park and mountain clean-ups across the Arabian Peninsula. Together, the teams collected more than two tons of debris.
• In Egypt, more than 50 volunteers from Hilton’s Cairo properties and corporate office contributed 700 volunteering hours to launch the Soap for Hope initiative with Ana El Masri, a social enterprise that supports, educates and empowers children at risk of trafficking.
• In Mexico, 50 DoubleTree by Hilton volunteers spent 350 hours repairing rooftops, installing a playground and conducting workshops for children and their caretakers at SOS Children’s Villages in Mexico City.
• Volunteers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia educated young people and the public on the importance of water conservation and stewardship in partnership with Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn. Bhd, the company responsible for local water supply and distribution.
• In San Francisco, more than 200 volunteers celebrated Hilton San Francisco’s 50th anniversary by assembling more than 24,800 meals.
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The experts speak
PADI EMEA regional manager Teo Brambilla led the group of certified divers during the Global Week of Service event in Ras Al Khaimah.
During the event, the 40 participating divers collected 147 pieces of debris, weighing more than 60kgs. The top three items collected were plastic, metal, and clothes.
The data from the various dive events is used to “help inform policy to improve waste management by helping convince individuals, governments and businesses to act on marine debris,” says Domino Albert, manager, Project Aware Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The data also helps Project Aware to understand the types and amounts of rubbish in the ocean, while building knowledge on the impact of marine debris on underwater environments.
In 2014, Project Aware launched an interactive map visualising nearly four years of ongoing reporting by its international network of volunteer scuba divers who remove rubbish they find underwater through the ‘Dive Against Debris’ programme.
The data collected during the Global Week of Service is featured on this unique map, shedding light on the growing problem that remains largely invisible to the wider public.
Building on the partnership with Hilton Worldwide’s Ras Al Khaimah properties, Albert says the team is working with Caroline Meledo on future projects.