CASE STUDY. Cordial Green Golf Bungalows: Improving sustainability with the Towards Travelife mentoring project in Maspalomas, Gran Canaria

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1 CASE STUDY Cordial Green Golf Bungalows: Improving sustainability with the Towards Travelife mentoring project in Maspalomas, Gran Canaria

2 ABOUT towards TRAVELIFE The aim of the Towards Travelife pilot project was to test a bespoke approach to mentoring hotels to help them to increase their capacity and motivation to work towards a Travelife award a sustainability management system and international certification scheme which has been developed by the UK travel industry. Following an initial proposal for a large-scale Towards Travelife project working with multiple stakeholders across 45 hotels in Turkey, Kuoni approached the Travel Foundation to investigate opportunities for conducting a smaller scale version of the project on an individual, consultancy basis. It was envisaged that those hotels involved would be able to demonstrate the business benefits of improving their sustainability performance while overcoming identified obstacles. Furthermore, it was hoped participating hotels would meet the standards of a Travelife award at the end of the pilot providing Kuoni with a means to monitor them, and communicate their sustainability performance to customers and give them the choice to spend their vacation in a sustainably managed hotel. Thus by collaborating with hotels to improve their sustainability performance, Kuoni attempts to minimize the negative impacts of its business activities, as apart from the flight to the holiday destination the accommodation has the highest social and environmental impact of a travel. There were four stages to the bespoke mentoring approach: Stage 1 HOTEL SELECTION Selection of hotels to participate through workshop & meetings led by Kuoni. Memorandum of Understanding between Kuoni, the selected hotels & the Travel Foundation to clarify the role, expectations & intended benefits for those hoteliers who choose to take part in the Towards Travelife pilot. Stage 2 ACTION PLANNING Identify local sustainability suppliers in Gran Canaria through facilitating meeting with hoteliers to share contacts. 1½ day site visit with consultants to meet hotel s lead contact, look at the existing challenges, identify and agree a tailor-made sustainability action plan with a list of activities to complete in order to meet the requirements of a Travelife award. Stage 3 MENTORING SUPPORT Monthly mentoring meetings via Skype/phone between consultants and hotel lead contacts to support hotels to implement their sustainability action plans through answering queries, signposting to on-line sustainability tools and local sustainability suppliers, monitoring progress and helping them to prepare for their external Travelife audit. Meetings were 1-1½ hours plus follow up activities. Stage 4 EVALUATION & AUDIT Independent Travelife Audit to assess progress made on sustainability performance for each hotel and determine the level of award achieved. Interviews with participating hotels to evaluate the mentoring approach and gather appropriate photos and monitoring data for the production of published case studies to share learning with other hotels. This project was implemented through a partnership between Travel Foundation and the Corporate Responsibility Department at Kuoni, with delivery support from Leeds Metropolitan University (UK), and University of Las Palmas Gran Canaria. Eleven hotel attended the initial workshop to learn about Towards Travelife and it s benefits, with four of Kuoni s hotels in Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura selected to take part over an 11 month period, one of which was Cordial Green Golf Bungalows.

3 ABOUT CORDIAL GREEN GOLF BUNGALOWS Situated in the resort of Maspalomas in Gran Canaria, Cordial Green Golf was built in 1987, refurbished in 2006, and is owned privately by a society with capital mainly from the Canaries. Our staff team of approximately 70 cater for the 266 self-catering bungalows and associated leisure facilities which enjoy an important level of repeat guests throughout the year. We have guests largely from the UK, Nordic Countries, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Spain. Approximately 20% of our guests currently come through Apollo in the winter season. Cordial Green Golf is part of the Cordial Canarias Hotels and Resorts hotel chain which began operating in The chain is now managing 1,636 accommodation units split amongst 7 establishments in Gran Canaria, Tenerife and Fuerteventura. ABOUT THIS CASE STUDY This case study focuses on the progress made by Cordial Green Golf Bungalows towards improving their sustainability performance following an invitation by Kuoni/Apollo to take part in the Towards Travelife pilot project. The philosophy of the Cordial chain is in line with sustainability and two of our properties, the Cordial Morgan Playa Hotel and Cordial Morgan Valle Apartments, already have a Gold Travelife Award. Therefore, we are already aware of the business benefits of improved sustainability for our guests and staff, and are very keen to get our other properties up to this standard. We saw our involvement in this project as an opportunity to get some welcome additional support for Cordial Green Golf Bungalows to really get going on their sustainability journey since they had done limited work in this area before. Whilst it is still early days for monitoring the impacts of our activities during this project, we have made some good progress in sustainability at our hotel and feel well-equipped to carry on this path in the future and build on our Gold Travelife that we have recently been awarded. Read on to to learn from our experience and activities to find out how our business benefitted from improving our sustainability performance

4 It is still a bit early to tell but we predict that thanks to our activities for the Towards Travelife project we have been able to demonstrate to our hotel owners that it makes business sense to invest in improving sustainability performance so it is now much more likely that they will make an investment. For example, we have been able to demonstrate the potential cost savings from installing more solar panels for heating water and more energy-efficient LED lighting. ARTURO LANG-LENTON, TECHNICAL SERVICES COORDINATOR

5 WHAT WERE THE BUSINESS BENEFITS OF GOING GREEN FOR CORDIAL GREEN GOLF BUNGALOWS? REDUCED COSTS A 700 investment in 48 LED lights for restaurant lighting could be paid back by the energy savings made in 11 months A cost-saving study of our existing solar panels (which heat water) indicated an average saving of kwh/year, which represents approx. savings of 9,000 annually   3,600 (1,212.63m³ of water/year) saved in one year as a result of installing hippos (free plastic bottles) into toilet cisterns to reduce water consumption Sale of re-useable cotton bags at the supermarket which have replaced plastic bags is generating 44.7 cents profit per bag IMPROVED STAFF ENGAGEMENT Development of Green Team and additional staff meetings and training helped to increase the engagment of staff in the implementation of our sustainability action plan Our promotion of local tourism businesses is providing local income generation opportunities A BETTER FUTURE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Gold Travelife Award helps us to demonstrate and communicate our achievements in sustainability, and improve our company image to tour operators, guests and employees Marketing advantage as we have the award we can now feature in the Travelife Collection and our achievements will be highlighted in the brochures and websites of Kuoni and other tour operators MEETING EMERGING CUSTOMER   Feedback in the form of likes and comments from our new Facebook site shows that our guests are appreciating our sustainability improvements and we think this will encourage them to recommend us to others PROTECTING RESOURCES Installation of recycling bins resulted in a reduction of 16.9% in the volume of waste per guest sent to landfill

6 Dunes at Maspolamas, Source: Lucy McCombes We see at our other property with a Gold Travelife Award, Cordial Mogan Playa, that our staff have been very motivated by our sustainability activities which are reducing our environmental impacts and contributing to local people. Plus our guests seem to feel better knowing their holidays were having a good impact. We are now starting to see this same experience happening at Cordial Green Golf. ARTURO LANG-LENTON, TECHNICAL SERVICES COORDINATOR

7 WHAT CHANGES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF IMPLEMENT? POLICY AND MANAGEMENT Cordial Green Golf s sustainability activities for this pilot project were led by our Corporate Director for Operations (Juan Roca) and were accomplished by the company s Technical Services Coordinator (Arturo Lang-Lenton) who is responsible for environmental sustainability across all the company s hotels on the island. He worked with our new Green Team set up at the hotel which included the General Manager and other heads of department to implement our sustainability action plan that we identified with the consultant during her initial site visit. Cordial Green Golf Team A sustainability policy was developed that captured our hotel s vision for improved sustainability performance, including specific objectives for reducing our business s impact on the environment, being responsible employers, and implementing proactive measures to protect and sustain the local social and economic environment in our community through encouraging our guests to use local restaurants and businesses, prioritising local purchasing and the employment of local people. Information poster on Cordial Green Golf s approach to monitoring waste, water & electricity Once our sustainability policy was in place we then turned our attention to improving our monitoring system so we could see the impact that our sustainability measures were having on guest and employee satisfaction, water and energy consumption, and the amount of recycled waste we produce. We also made a list of our local suppliers and the local produce that we source from them to see where we might be able to improve on our local purchasing currently estimated at 27% which is actually quite good in light of the limited industry and agriculture on the island.

8 WHAT CHANGES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF IMPLEMENT? FAIR EMPLOYMENT We have made some important progress in terms of our employment practices, for example in relation to the development of a comprehensive staff induction guide including sustainability information, staff training for a small number of management staff on waste management and energy efficiency, staff satisfaction survey and a series of staff meetings in relation to sustainability. To support these activities with staff we used some of the existing on-line information and training resources available for hotels, for example the Travel Foundation Greener Accommodation tool on their website. We are now working on a more detailed employment policy, further staff training on sustainability, more detailed monitoring of our existing staff and the benefits and training they enjoy, and incorporating specific sustainability responsibilities for staff into their job descriptions. Staff induction guide TOP TIP The Travel Foundation s and Travelife s free on-line Greener Accommodations tool is a step-by-step guide that will help you work towards certification through greening your accommodation, with helpful tips, videos and detailed instructions that you can share with your staff. This tool includes: Advice in English, Turkish, Spanish, Greek and Arabic Top tips for managers and posters for staff Videos that explain how to implement greener measures Case studies like this one to demonstrate the benefit of greening your accommodation Advice on sourcing local products and fair employment (English only) Training presentations to motivate staff to engage with your green scheme (English only) Finally...advice on communicating the work you are doing in this area. For help with your fair employment product range and visit: communications visit and click on the relevant modules:

9 WHAT CHANGES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF IMPLEMENT? BUYING LOCAL As a locally owned hotel we are already making efforts to buy local products and services where possible but we have recently started to look at how we can increase and demonstrate our efforts in this area through working with our suppliers and writing a new purchasing policy. However, since most of our purchasing for our hotel is centralised for all the hotels in the chain, this is an activity that is being addressed more widely by the company s purchasing team who are looking into the possibility of developing a more formalised code of conduct that can be integrated into our contracting arrangements to support the implementation of our policy in practice. Local produce sold in hotel supermarket Furthermore, we have put information on our hotel s Facebook page and an information board in the reception area to provide our guests with more information on local events, restaurants and excursions to encourage and facilitate them to leave the hotel and use local businesses.

10 WHAT CHANGES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF IMPLEMENT? COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Our involvement with this project made us recognise that we need to better communicate who we perceive as the local community, the kind of relationship we aspire to have with them, and what we do to make a positive contribution locally. Since Maspalomas is a large tourist resort with very few local people living there it is not an obvious local, closely-knit community for us to work with so we think more widely about where we focus our efforts on the Island. As a good starting point, we have tried to reflect our aspirations for benefitting the local community in our new sustainability policy, and we have started to document and collate what we do in a community folder and on our hotel s Facebook site to demonstrate to the auditor (and others) what we have been doing. Local people south of Gran Canaria - football team supported by Cordial Canarias It is very important that we work with the local community of Gran Canaria as we can t ignore the place where we do business, and the need for us all to work together to have a long future and ensure our island is a sustainable destination ARTURO LANG-LENTON, TECHNICAL SERVICES COORDINATOR

11 WHAT CHANGES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF IMPLEMENT? COMMUNICATIONS We want to let both our staff and guests know what we are trying to achieve in terms of sustainability and involve them in achieving the targets we have set ourselves in our sustainability policies and action plan. Guest communication re: our sustainability team & their roles Cordial s sustainability logo During this project we have made good progress with guest and staff communications through the provision of new sustainability information on-line and in room directories, a sustainability notice board in reception, weekly eco-day activities run by our animation team, and a new Facebook site aimed at encouraging feedback from both guests and employees on sustainability and other hotel matters. We have also taken advantage of using guest sustainability communications produced by the company for our other hotels. Future communications will be enhanced since we were awarded a Travelife Gold Award at the end of the pilot so can now take advantage of using this certification and logo to help communicate our achievements. For our staff, we displayed Travel Foundation information posters and our new sustainability policy and action plan on the staff notice boards to provide further guidance on how we can all play a part in sustainability. We also introduced sustainability activities as a regular item for staff departmental meetings.

12 WHAT CHANGES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF IMPLEMENT? We had not done many sustainability activities prior to this pilot project so we chose to start with a focus on environmental measures to reduce our energy, water and waste consumption since we had a greater understanding of these, there was the potential of cost-savings which interested our hotel owners and this fitted with the expertise of the Technical Services Coordinator. ENERGY SAVING One key activity included two comprehensive studies of the potential benefits of further solar panels (for heating water) and LED lighting as a means of presenting the hotel owners with a business case for their investment. As a result, new LED lighting has been fitted in the restaurant areas to start, and the owners are still waiting for further data on the length of time for a return on investment before committing to invest in more solar panels but we predict a positive outcome. Cordial Green Golf main swimming pool LED lighting in restaurant area In addition we repaired the swimming pool and associated machinery to make heating it more energy efficient.

13 WHAT CHANGES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF IMPLEMENT? SAVING WATER We fitted water-saving devices to the toilet flushes in all bungalows, and had previously installed water-reduction measures in the taps and showers. WASTE REDUCTION Recycling We increased how much of our waste we were able to recycle through introducing communal recycling green points throughout the hotels for plastic, paper, glass and batteries. To help encourage guests to use the bins we put information on the new green points in the room directories and on the sustainability notice board in reception. Reduction of plastics We made a number of changes to reduce the amount of plastics consumed at the hotel. For example, providing branded cloth bag alternative to plastic bags at our supermarket. Reducing chemical consumption We carried out a waste efficiency assessment with an external consultant which resulted in a number of useful recommendations that we were able to action. For example, on how to reduce detergent packaging and review our suppliers who dispose of our chemical waste.

14 WHAT RESOURCES DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF INVEST TO GET THINGS GOING? So far our main financial investments in sustainability have been relatively small-scale, consisting largely of the new LED lighting, buying cloth bags to sell at the supermarket and the new bins for the green recycling points. However, we are envisaging making a larger investment in further solar panels for heating water once we have confirmation from our study that there will be a reasonable time frame for the return on investment. The other investment we have made is in terms of staff time into implementing our sustainability action plan. what challenges did cordial green golf face? The main challenges encountered by the Green Team have been making sustainability changes to a relatively old building, and raising the awareness of those hotel staff who are relatively new to working towards sustainability. To address these issues we took advantage of the expertise of our hotel s maintenance manager and Cordial s technical services co-ordinator to research appropriate new sustainable technologies for the current building; and our sustainability team is successfully working closely and regularly with the hotel staff to raise their awareness of sustainability and the role they play in implementing our sustainability action plan. Furthermore, the ownership structure and being managed by a larger chain with centralised systems has made progress on addressing a few of the activities on our hotel s sustainability action plan a bit slower than originally expected. However, we have found that having the support and guidance from our central offices invaluable as they have previous experience of Travelife, and we realise that it makes sense to address many key issues as a chain rather than at individual hotel level which often requires more work. We also found monitoring the changes in consumption of water, electricity and waste resulting from our new activities a bit tricky at first as there have been a number of different variables affecting our consumption levels such as hotel maintenance works. Now these issues have been resolved and we have a good baseline in place so we will be able to compare our current consumption with our future consumption to see the impact of any sustainability interventions in this area.

15 HOW DID CORDIAL GREEN GOLF FIND THE MENTORING USEFUL? We found the mentoring very useful as we got to know our mentor personally which made us feel involved and give us a good understanding of what we needed to achieve through the Towards Travelife project. It was also a good thing to have the pressure of reporting back on progress each month which stops you procrastinating or getting too busy with other things. I really enjoyed being part of the Towards Travelife project as it showed to me that our hotels are not just about the money. ARTURO LANG-LENTON TECHNICAL SERVICES COORDINATOR I learnt a lot from the monthly mentoring guidance which I can apply to my future work with Cordial Green Golf and our other hotels ARTURO LANG-LENTON, TECHNICAL SERVICES COORDINATOR WHAT LESSONS WOULD YOU SHARE WITH OTHER HOTELIERS INTERESTED IN IMPROVING THEIR SUSTAINABILITY PERFOMANCE? If a hotel already knows how to improve their sustainability they just need to reorganise their priorities, make time available and involve their staff fully to implement the project actions. However, for hotels that are new to sustainability then they need to get the type of external mentoring support that we got for this project to show them the steps to follow. Make sure you involve staff fully in delivering your sustainability action plan get people s feedback in person on what is happening each week and make sure they feel valued in carrying out the responsibilities you give them. ARTURO LANG-LENTON TECHNICAL SERVICES COORDINATOR

16 ABOUT THE TRAVEL FOUNDATION The Travel Foundation is an independent UK charity set up through partnership between the outbound tourism industry, government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The Travel Foundation works to influence and enable travel companies both in the UK and in destinations to integrate sustainable tourism into core business practices and customer communications to safeguard the destinations their customers enjoy. To find out more about them visit their website at: ABOUT THE KUONI GROUP Kuoni s head office is located in Zurich, Switzerland, where Alfred Kuoni founded the company in Over the years Kuoni has developed into today s global travel services company, now employing more than people in almost 100 countries around the world. In its European source markets the company has more than 160 of its own retail outlets and tour operating offices. Its global destination travel services business has several different types of office: sales offices in the source markets, particularly in Asia for group travel business; agency offices that look after guests at the destinations; offices dedicated to buying in and selling online-based destination services; and offices specialising in MICE business (meetings, incentives, conferences and events). Visa services provider VFS Global (external consular services) runs a worldwide business through more than 800 offices spread across every continent. Overall, counting all business activities, Kuoni has more than 400 separate offices in almost 100 countries around the world. Kuoni has been committed to a sustainable development of the tourism industry for many years and strives to act as a good corporate citizen which takes into full account the current and future economic, social and environmental impacts of its business. To find out more about them visit: ABOUT TRAVELIFE Travelife has hotel and apartment members around the world. It helps its members to develop good sustainable practices and to promote their achievements within the travel industry and to European and international consumers. Travelife is one of the few schemes to value social policy as highly as environmental management. Hotels observing the standards are awarded the Travelife Gold, Silver or Bronze label, enabling their achievement to be clearly communicated to their customers. If you would like to know more please go to or send an info@travelife.org or call us on +44 (0) For more information take a look at the other case studies on the other three hotels involved in this pilot project, namely Heliomar Apartments and Riversun Hotel Riosol in Gran Canaria and Playitas Hotel in Fuerteventura. These will be made available on the Travel Foundation website: