Strengthening the Links in the Chain
Kuoni continuously evaluates the social and environmental challenges faced by in its destinations and collaborates with various partners towards improving the sustainability at the destinations.
An important means thereby are workshops conducted with hoteliers in the destinations. Kuoni brings together local experts and practitioners in the fields of social and environmental hotel management and thus contributes to hoteliers’ increased awareness of sustainability aspects as well as providing them with concrete measures that will enhance the sustainability of their business and activities. Hotel partners also learn about other benefits of sustainability management for their business, such as cost reduction, and are given a platform to exchange experiences among each other.
Read about the various types of workshops we host below.
Child protection - worldwide
Kuoni has been conducting a series of workshops with partner hotels on the child sex tourism issue since 2006. Workshops have already been held with numerous hotels in Thailand, the Dominican Republic, Bulgaria, India and Kenya, and the programme is being steadily extended to further destinations. The programme is intended to help these partners abide by the terms of their contractual agreements with Kuoni and motivate them to actively and personally fight the sexual exploitation of children. Learn more about child protection here.
Environmental care in Thailand and Bulgaria
Climate change and freshwater resource management need to be tackled at various levels and by various players, each using the tools and means best suited to their task. To help our partner hotels play their part in protecting environmental resources, we have been conducting a series of workshops in collaboration with local partners. The workshops provide a platform for experts and advisors who are familiar with the local situation to present the management and employees of our partner hotels with the latest findings and solutions on climate change, waste disposal, energy and water use. The specialists also pass on valuable – and often extremely simple – tips on how the participants can apply these findings at their own hotels. The workshops often include visits to concrete projects that can serve as vivid “best-practice” illustrations of the principles presented. A total of six environmental care workshops were held in Thailand and Bulgaria in 2009 and 2010. The events allowed us to sensitise 225 hotel employees to the various issues involved.
Fair working conditions in Bulgaria
Kuoni is also active in promoting social and environmental improvements in Bulgaria’s hotel management, especially along the Black Sea coast. Here we work with various partners from the public and the private sectors including local authorities and tourist boards, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), Switzerland’s State Secretariat of Economic Affairs (seco) and our local hotel partners. The aim of the program is to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) and cleaner energy productions (CP) to raise the efficiency of the hotels involved and enhance their competitive abilities. This is done partly by showing them how they can take simple actions to save energy and water and thus also reduce their costs, and partly by improving the working conditions and prospects of employees and their families. By doing so, the program simultaneously aims at raising the hotels’ quality and service performance, too. The program has trained 20 national specialists each in CP and CSR, and these individuals are now supporting 25 hotels in various parts of the country to devise, develop and conduct their own sustainability projects in the social and environmental fields.