Almond beach village

Our Resort: At our resort, we recognize that our business has an important role to play in protecting and enhancing the environment for the residents of Barbados, as well as our guests. We also recognize that we have a social commitment to the local and regional community. To this end we are committed to achieving sound practices and have committed to regular auditing & improvement, with a yearly review of our Policy.

We involve our staff, guests and business partners and our Policy is communicated to employees, guests and suppliers, and available to all stakeholders and the general public on request. All employees receive the training and resources required to meet our objectives, and Department Heads are involved in setting environmental targets. In addition, we strive to forge collaborative partnerships (Ministerial, Regional, Community, NGO) to ensure the longevity of the tourism product and to achieve wider environmental goals.

Community: We have adopted a purchasing policy that supports environmental products and local products and services wherever possible. We strive to promote all that is local including food, art, craft, history, music & culture.

Environment: We strive to mitigate environmental impacts on our precious ecosystems including forest, mangroves, beach, sea-grass beds and coral reefs. We aim to minimize our use of energy, renewable resources and water without compromising service. We have begun to use solar power throughout the resort to heat water and our golf course is irrigated entirely from waste water. We aim to use natural alternatives to hazardous chemicals wherever possible and reduce our waste by ‘rethinking, reducing, reusing and recycling’ and initiatives such as composting. In 2006, we hosted the annual World Environment Day exhibition for the 5th time, which gave Barbadian companies the opportunity to showcase their environmental products and services.

The Hotel Group: This resort belongs to a hotel group, striving to be the most environmentally sensitive all-inclusive hotel group in the Caribbean. The Group has a dedicated environmental director who is constantly developing the Group’s environmentally sensitive programmes across the hotel portfolio, and maintains high levels of environmental responsibility in all the Group's operations.

The Group's Barbados properties are the only ones on the island which have been consistently re-certified for Green Globe status. The Group has won the Barbados Hotels and Tourism Association Award for Environment, based on it's commitment to promoting the environment and implementing community programmes including supporting local schools, children’s homes, local fairs and events, and sponsoring major cultural events.

As a Tour Operator: We are committed to sustainable tourism and want to do our best to ensure that your children and their children are able to enjoy a holiday as beautiful and unspoiled as the ones we offer you today. We actively support the Travel Foundation in their work with people and environments in holiday destinations overseas. We also work closely with the Federation of Tour Operators in driving improvements in sustainability across the industry. We are working with our suppliers to encourage and reward responsible practice and ‘greening’ our own operations (including aiming for a carbon neutral HQ within 3 years).

We support charities in the UK through our Group charity arm and through a comprehensive programme of employee volunteering. We also undertake a range of initiatives to support community organisations in our holiday destinations. These include funding a degree scholarship in Tourism Management for Caribbean nationals, providing sports equipment for schools in hurricane-hit Grenada and supporting community development and entrepreneurship in South Africa.

Thanks to Sir Richard Branson, we are also the only tour operator able to say that all our future profits will be invested in renewable energy initiatives. (Together with the rest of the our travel group, this is a commitment worth US $10 (GB £5)BN over the next 10 years)