Hyatt Hotels Corporation has announced the winners of the inaugural Hyatt Thrive Leadership Awards recognising full service, managed hotels, resorts, and field offices for their outstanding commitment in 2011 to initiatives aligned with Hyatt’s global corporate responsibility platform ‘Hyatt Thrive’.
To be considered, applicants must have demonstrated leadership in environmental sustainability and/or community engagement.
A total of six awards will be distributed every year to the hotels and resorts that demonstrate exemplary leadership in these two areas.
More than 70 nominations were submitted this year, and winners were selected by a cross functional committee comprised of representatives from Hyatt leadership and its operational teams.
Each nomination was evaluated based on the following criteria: a coherent, focused approach that yields high impact; significant employee engagement; strategic programming tied to the company’s mission, values and goals, and Hyatt Thrive platform; innovative approach that yields substantial environmental benefits; and, a sustained, long-term investment in the community.
This year’s winners included:
-Excellence in Environmental Sustainability: Hyatt Regency Atlanta and a collaborative team from Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency hotels in Dubai;
-Excellence in Community Engagement: Grand Hyatt Jakarta and Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok; and
-Excellence in Doing It All: Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo and Hyatt Regency Hill Country
“We are honored and humbled to recognise the valuable contributions made by the winners of our inaugural Hyatt Thrive Leadership Awards,” said Hyatt Hotels and Resorts’ Vice President of Corporate Responsibility, Brigitta Witt.
“Actively contributing to the environmental and social well-being of our communities is integral to sustaining our business; and the recipients of this award exemplify Hyatt’s longstanding commitment to contribute to the prosperity, health and advancement of the many communities around the world that we serve.”
THE WINNERS
Environmental Sustainability: Hyatt Regency Atlanta
Despite the limitations of a 45-year-old building in the midst of an urban landscape, Hyatt Regency Atlanta has turned obstacles into opportunity achieving a 35% reduction in energy and a 36% reduction in water with numerous initiatives established to achieve these results. The hotel has been tracking its environmental efforts since 1991, and today, its Green Team leads the robust recycling and composting program, which resulted in the diversion over 1,000 tons of material waste last year.
Environmental Sustainability: Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency hotels in Dubai
Capitalizing on their close proximity to one another, these three hotels demonstrate the power of a collaborative approach to reducing environmental impact. To reduce the amount of freshwater consumption in an area of increased water scarcity, the hotels recover condensate and treat effluent for use in cooling towers and other equipment. At Park Hyatt Dubai, this effluent treatment saves up to 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day and more than one million gallons per year. At Grand Hyatt Dubai, home to one of the largest solar panel installations in the Middle East, the hotel saves more than 100,000 gallons of diesel per year and effectively reduces its associated carbon emissions.
Community Engagement: Grand Hyatt Jakarta
After receiving a US$20,000 Hyatt Community Grant, Grand Hyatt Jakarta grew the opportunity into an employee engagement project and provided significant economic and health improvements for a rural village living below the poverty line. For the last two years, 323 associates partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build 20 homes for 20 families in need.
Community Engagement: Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok
Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok was recognized for its passionate and long-standing commitment to the economic and social development of the local communities that surround the hotel. For the last 17 years, the hotel has partnered with UNICEF to train more than 80 students from rural neighborhoods. The hotel’s sponsorship includes English language courses, accommodations, uniforms, meals, and daily allowances for the students. After spending five months in this immersive hospitality training program, many students are offered full time positions at the hotel. Most recently, the hotel was poised to respond when severe floods devastated Bangkok and the surrounding community. In response, Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok provided accommodations to 233 hotel associates and their families. In addition to donating food, drinking water, clothes and other necessities to the Thai Red Cross, the team helped prepare meals for flood victims and participated in a city-wide cleanup effort after the water had receded. Since December, the hotel has engaged guests in their relief efforts, raising nearly US$20,000 to restore a local school that sustained severe damage.
Doing It All: Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo
With a comprehensive approach to address environmental and socialissues, Grand Hyatt Sao Paulo associates are hands-on with dramatic impact. The hotel Green Team’s most recent projects include reusing condensed steam from boilers to heat hotel swimming pools, collecting rainwater for landscaping, and launching a carbon offset program for meetings. Through partnerships with two organizations – The Youth Career Initiative (YCI) and Formare – this hotel recruits underprivileged youth from surrounding slums, brings them into the hotel and teaches them a wide range of skills that include grooming, personal finance, civics, personal responsibility and hospitality training. Today, more than ten percent of the hotel’s work force is comprised of young adults that would likely not have had any other opportunities to advance in their lives.
Doing It All: Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa
Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa demonstrates a comprehensive, results-based commitment to reducing its environmental impact, and leads a strong community outreach program that demonstrates both breadth and depth, yielding economic and social impacts in their surrounding neighborhoods. Working with organizations such as United Way, Hands On Education, Habitat for Humanity, and the local food bank, Hyatt Regency Hill Country’s programs include a 19-year partnership with a local school and an on-site hospitality training program for adults with disabilities that results in many full time positions at the hotel. Environmentally, the hotel has a clear action plan in place and has several impactful initiatives such as the upgrade of an irrigation control system that reduced energy and water consumption by more than 10% and ozone treatment in laundry, which is saving more than 20% in water and sewer costs, 30% in natural gas, and is reducing chemical use by over 20%.