Hilton organises workshop on sustainable day for guests |14 October 2019
The workshop
Staying true in its efforts to go green the Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort & Spa last week organised a workshop with students from the University of Seychelles (UniSey) and Seychelles Tourism Academy (STA) with the aim of developing ways together in which the hotel can organise a sustainable day for its guests.
The main focus of the day was to create a recurring sustainable day for the hotel each month that will tackle issues ranging from climate change to energy consumption with the inspiration from students and lecturers as well as the Hilton team.
“We want to have contribution from the local community and not only from the hotel’s point of view,” said the general manager of Hilton, Daniel Fabbri.
Mr Fabbri noted that Hilton is very ambitious and never gives up on achieving their objectives, adding that the hotel has a passion for supporting the environment as well as making an impact in the community.
He said that the hotel collaborated with students from the STA as they are the future of the hotel industry while UniSey already has classes that focuses on sustainability.
“The main aim of this project is to create a sustainable day once a month for Hilton guests and staff and the idea behind this project is to expand it to other hotels in the country and not just Hilton,” said Duncan Bonds, the operations manager at Hilton Northolme.
“We involved STA and UniSey because we want to get feedback on how we can do things better because there is always room for improvement especially on the sustainability side,” said Mr Bonds.
“We partnered with Hilton as a result of the memorandum of understanding that we have signed with the hotel. We regard Hilton hotel as a good partner that we can work with and our philosophy on the sustainability and the development of students in society is similar,” said Justin Valentin, the chancellor of UniSey.
He added that the university will be bringing its expertise on sustainability through its students and professors taking part in the workshop.
Mr Valentin noted that UniSey will continue this activity and extend the activity to the whole university to give Hilton the kind of sustainable day that it wants.
Hilton currently has stopped using plastic products and from last year it has saved a total of 370,000 plastic bottles.
The Hilton Northolme is also one of the only hotels that uses solar panels for hot water.
Mr Duncan added that the hotel has a big community outreach programme where they partner with various people, one of whom is ‘Jean-Paul’s Eco farm’ which the hotel is helping to develop.