Tel. +44 (0)1273 600030 (UK)
Our commitment to sustainable tourism involves taking care of the local community as well as the natural environment. We have upheld a firm belief in the importance of environmental issues for many years and have given extensive training to staff on how they can help in protecting the natural environment.
Community support: We have adopted a local primary school and developed a relationship, which works really well for both sides. At key times of the year the children will perform at the hotel, by for example, singing carols at Christmas time, welcome songs for groups of visitors, and on one special occasion performing for the Duke of Edinburgh during a private luncheon.
We support the school in a variety of ways. We assist with learning and development by giving the children tours of the hotel and explaining how everything works, we visit the school to give talks about the tourism industry, we donate prizes at speech day, provide transportation for school tours to local hospitality related sites and we also play host to an annual training event, the ‘teacher’s professional day’.
School projects are varied and have included; organising competitions (such as Christmas card designs to be sold at the hotel), environmental essays and collages, maintenance and construction work in helping to convert one of the school buildings into a library and media centre, and the donation of computers, books and other reading material.
Wildlife protection: We realise that our guests are not the only ones using the beaches of Barbados and are keen to make sure our four-legged friends feel just as welcome! We work with the Bellairs Research Institute at McGill University in Montreal, to ensure that turtle hatchlings are collected when born and passed over to the Institute to be tagged and released safely. We also turn off our shore lights during turtle hatching season so as not to confuse the baby turtles.
How we care for the environment: We have introduced several measures to contribute to the fight against global warming, save water and reduce our waste as much as possible. We have installed solar panels to provide hot water to offices and guest rooms instead of using electric water heaters. We have replaced all of our spotlights with energy saving fluorescent bulbs and our outdoor & lobby lights operate based on sunlight sensors to conserve energy.
We have replaced all toilets throughout the hotel with water efficient ones and now they use half the amount of water as they used to. All rooms also have water saving taps and we have fitted our showers with heads that use 75% less water. Our pool has sand filters with cartridge filters installed. This eliminates the need for backwash and so conserves water. In addition we have installed a pool ionizer which kills bacterial algae and reduces the need for chlorine.
We are dedicated to reduce the waste we produce. Plastic and glass bottles on the resort are recycled and to prevent seafront pollution we use recyclable plastic glasses on the beach and around the pool.
We try to involve our guests in efforts to save energy and water through a towel re-use program. We use cloth laundry bags for guest laundry instead of plastic bags, which are completely re-useable.
Finally, we also use special locally made baskets that hang outside each guest room to deliver daily newspapers. They are reusable, do not need washing, eliminate the need for plastic wrapping and their purchase supports local craftspeople
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)
We invite every traveller who books a holiday via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the holidays they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same holiday can have different views!
