It seems likely that the ‘new normal’ of travel will be heavily centred on sustainability in travel. As travellers, we will start to be more discerning and put more emphasis on different things such as renewable energy, eco-tourism and more.
To find out more about this evolving travel trend and also about their push towards a more sustainable travel industry, we spoke to Marc Handl, Vice President, Hotel Operations, Pan Pacific Hotels Group.
The Group has been vocal about its green initiatives through the use of green technology and sustainable operating practices. This includes the PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering’s rain-water harvesting system which collects 6,000 cubic metres of water a year to irrigate the gardens.
READ MORE: We speak to Marco Den Ouden from Patina Maldives about the return of travel
Throughout this email interview, Marc was kind enough to share his thoughts on the travel situation and the growing sustainable travel trend. Here’s what else he had to share.
Could you share some of the things that the PARKROYAL COLLECTION is doing to encourage sustainability?
Pan Pacific Hotels Group is deeply mindful of the ecological footprint that urban development and the global hospitality industry have. The PARKROYAL COLLECTION brand is our dedicated push to drive the sustainability agenda, and we aim to continuously raise this bar as we grow the brand.
We currently operate two hotels in Singapore under this brand: PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering and PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay. We are proud and honoured that they have been recognised for their sustainable and iconic designs – for instance, within months of opening, PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay was awarded “5-star Best Hotel Interior” at the International Property Awards 2021.
Since its opening in 2013, PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering has been consistently awarded for its green design: it has been named “World’s Leading Green City Hotel” (2018- 2020) and “Asia’s Leading Green City Hotel” (2015 – 2020) at the World Travel Awards, and “HICAP Sustainable Hotel” in 2020.
Looking into the specific features of these hotels, we can see tangible results. For example, PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering is built with non-air-conditioned corridors on the guest floors and double-glazed glass, reducing energy consumption by air-conditioning while regulating air temperature and circulation. It also boasts 15,000 sqm of vertical gardens–more than 200% the hotel’s gross floor area–and this foliage helps ‘cool down’ the building by shielding it from direct sunlight.
The hotel has solar panels and motion sensors installed throughout the property to conserve a combined average of 98,133 kWh per year. Its rainwater harvesting tanks—from which collected rainwater is used to irrigate the gardens in the hotel—save an average of 6,000m3 of water a year, equivalent to 2.4 times the volume of an Olympic swimming pool.
PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay had a unique beginning. In its construction phase, we preserved the original structure of the building from 1985; this decision prevented the production of 51,300 tonnes of carbon dioxide – an amount that would come with demolishing a typical high-rise. This is equivalent to wiping out 8.7 million trees, or a forested area larger than all of Singapore’s nature reserves.
Keeping the original structure means that PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay has had to employ creative ways to minimise the levels of energy consumed by your typical modern building. Double-glazed glass and the low-emissivity Atrium Skylight filters natural daylight into the indoor spaces, while reducing ambient temperature by 2°C – equivalent to a 2% reduction in electricity use. Air conditioning and chiller pumps run at lower speeds, and soon, updated solar panel technology will enable the hotel to generate 10,083 kWh of electricity every month.
The Group’s unyielding efforts in sustainability have earned both PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay and PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering BCA Green Mark Gold and Platinum certifications respectively, and made a visible impact on their carbon footprints. Through this brand, we believe that we are setting a strong precedent for effective sustainable urban development.
We also involve our guests in our sustainability journey, and hopefully inspire them to adopt eco-conscious practices in their daily lives. For example, we have installed filtered-water taps in all guest rooms at PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering and PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay, and provide glass bottles to them in their rooms to completely replace plastic bottles.
The hotels are also rolling out pumped amenities made from biodegradable plastics, reducing the need for travel-sized plastic bottles. Our F&B outlets have also eliminated the consumption of single-use plastics. Even our MICE guests are provided with non-single-use plastics for their meetings at our PARKROYAL COLLECTION hotels.
At PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay, we have an extensive urban farm of more than 60 varieties of edible greens, which provides some 20% of produce to Peppermint Restaurant. Our guests love to visit and admire the budding harvests, and we plan to introduce more engaging programmes to immerse our guests into the urban farming experience.
Our visible commitment to sustainability has garnered our PARKROYAL COLLECTION brand a growing following. Now, with environmental-friendliness rising in the public consciousness, especially among the Gen Y, Gen Z and millennial demographic, we will be introducing electronic vehicles and charging stations to the hotels’ premises in the near future.
What are some of the challenges in making a luxury hotel sustainable, while maintaining quality and standard?
One of the challenges as a Group leading the push for sustainability is how to appeal to consumer mindsets without compromising our brand values. When we consider the more traditional expectations, there are guests who do expect their stay to be accompanied by certain luxuries that may not be environmentally friendly, such as single-use bathroom amenities and bottled mineral water.
Our task is to creatively address these needs in a way that aligns with our sustainability agenda. The arresting “garden-in-a-hotel” experience in our hotels immerses our guests in a world of appreciation for the natural environment. In the case of bathroom amenities, we provide brand-label soaps and lotions that are cruelty-free and paraben-free, dispensed through biodegradable pump bottles.
Our guests have also responded well to the glass bottles and filtered-water taps provided, understanding that PARKROYAL COLLECTION stands for environmentally-conscious practices. Our restaurants have also introduced creative cuisine using sustainable food sources, and PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay’s Urban Farm.
Our concierge has also gone digital, but without going low-touch with our guests. While these may have been initially radical changes to the traditional luxury hotel experience, such sustainable measures have set the standard across the industry, and we see that a growing majority of guests are supportive of these measures.
At the same time, we must emphasise that the quality of our products and services do not decrease. There is a misconception that sustainable practices compromise the quality of the product, and this is where we challenge ourselves to set a higher standard. Sustainability is a holistic approach and a lifestyle that doesn’t mean a drop in value or quality, we aim to present such inspiring experiences through the PARKROYAL COLLECTION brand. The luxury service mindset focuses on the holistic experience, and we do not compromise on our sincerity in service and the quality of the hardware.
In fact, it demands a higher cost of implementation. Efforts like installing solar panels and double-glazed glass, as well as adopting sustainable food sources and biodegradable materials, is a cost that we bear. However, we remain firm in the belief that this must be viewed with a longer-term perspective of eventual returns, underscored by our true and unwavering commitment to sustainability. In fact, green features such as solar panels and double-walled glass can even bring cost savings in the long run.
There’s a growing interest in sustainability from travellers, do you see this becoming the norm for hospitality in Singapore?
There has been a noticeable shift in Singapore’s hospitality offerings, as we see more players exploring green practices like introducing vegetarian and vegan menus, and replacing bottled water with refillable glass bottles.
Earlier this year, the Singapore Government also announced an injection of an extra S$68.5m into the Tourism Development Fund for businesses looking to test-bed sustainable tourism offerings. This move towards sustainability in the local tourism sector is also aligned with the Singapore Green Plan that was unveiled earlier this year, and is one of the 2030 targets under the green economy pillar.
We are encouraged by such progress in the sector’s push towards sustainability. The seeds have been planted and this will likely inspire more sustainability-led innovation in Singapore’s hospitality landscape. We look forward to seeing the creative solutions that will come in the following years.
READ MORE: Here are the 4 ways to become a sustainable traveller
Looking to demand from beyond our shores, we are seeing that a growing portion of travellers and guests– especially the younger generations–want to stay at hotels that have successfully and visibly integrated green practices.
According to the Deloitte Global 2021 Millennial and Gen Z Survey, 28% of all respondents said they’ve started or deepened their consumer relationships with businesses whose products and services benefit the environment. A comparable number of them have stopped or lessened relationships with organisations whose offerings they see as harming the planet.
In some ways, the pandemic has sparked a growing appreciation for the environment and nature. As such, we anticipate that sustainability-led, “back-to-nature” concepts will rise to become one of the top hotel trends in the coming years, and this will likely be accompanied by the implementation of vertical farming at an even greater scale than currently seen.
We are also seeing a movement towards plant-based F&B menus, with more vegetarian and vegan choices for consumers. This demand has already begun to sway the F&B offerings at our hotels under PARKROYAL COLLECTION, and we look forward to seeing how it might take root in other brands and hospitality offerings across the sector.
Finally, as food delivery and pick-up services have also gained much traction during the pandemic, and with F&B being a key revenue stream for more and more hospitality players, the industry may start to give recycled materials in meal packaging even greater consideration in the years to come.
If we look at the potential resurgence of the travel and tourism industry in Singapore, how far away do you think we are from a strong rebound?
With international travel grounded as a result of the pandemic, the hospitality sector has been one of the hardest hit. This is especially pronounced in Singapore given the small domestic market. For 1Q2021, the local hotel industry reported a fall in overall room revenue of 70.2% from 1Q2020 before the pandemic hit. We have been kept afloat by domestic staycation demand, spurred on by government initiatives, which will remain a key focus until borders reopen.
For a true rebound for the tourism and hospitality industries, skies will need to reopen. We are looking to a journey of 3 to 5 years for recovery, as forecasted by Singapore Tourism Board. For now, as we see vaccination rates on the rise throughout many countries, a “post-Covid world” is visible on the horizon. Experts suggest that we may soon be entering a new normal where Covid-19 becomes endemic. This signals to us to be prepared for recovery.
With the multitude of staycation offers and safe management measures efficiently rolled out by Pan Pacific Hotels Group and other hospitality players here in the past year, we believe that our hotels are well-positioned to receive international guests when they return, and pivot if necessary.
For example, we have used this time to take on job redesign by upskilling and reskilling our associates, empowering them to provide multi-faceted service. Our efforts include improving our central reservations system, combining security and concierge services—made possible with technological advancements in security—and more. We are thankful for the various government grants which have enabled this.
We will also continue to maintain stringent standards of hygiene and cleanliness through our Pan Pacific Cares programme. Under this programme, we are collaborating with healthcare leader Diversey to employ healthcare-grade cleaning and infection prevention solutions at all of our properties, while taking cues from WHO and respective local government authorities to ensure elevated measures and protocols.
Have you noticed any changing behaviours amongst Singaporeans when it comes to staycations and local tourism?
While we are seeing signs of what some are calling “staycation fatigue”, domestic demand continues for local staycations, with Singapore residents looking out for a more relaxing and refreshing stay where they can recharge.
We are seeing this through the support received by PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay, which reopened in December 2019 to offer a fresh new “garden-in-a-hotel” experience for staycationers. We also observed domestic demand for health and wellness-related packages, as more Singaporeans turn to mindfulness and wellness programmes to cope with the stress from the pandemic.
To meet this demand, Pan Pacific Hotels Group introduced wellness-focused staycation offerings to PARKROYAL COLLECTION Marina Bay. Guests there can partake in fitness classes and wellness workshops alongside our lifestyle offerings of farm-to-table experiences, spin studio and more.
Owing to the work-from-home movement brought about by Covid-19, we have also noticed a rise in demand for work-daycations. For this segment, we introduced Turn 5 Workcays into 1 Staycay, where guests who book five work-cation day passes at one of our participating Singapore hotels will be rewarded with a complimentary one-night staycation to unwind.
We’ve also exclusively partnered with KKday to launch a unique otter-themed staycation, Stay, Hide and Seek with Otah & Friends, where our guests can enjoy a fun-filled stay with selected properties under our Group and collect limited-edition Otah plushies dressed in various ethnic costumes of Singapore. This package has picked up considerably among families and couples, especially as they gear up to celebrate this year’s National Day.
These all suggest to us that while the market is possibly experiencing some “staycation fatigue”, there is still latent demand for staycations – locals may be seeking more innovative, value-for-money, and unique experiences to nudge them back through our doors.
Our online F&B delivery platform, which we launched to strengthen our e-Commerce ecosystem, has also become a constant source of revenue for our restaurants since the pandemic. This channel truly opened up for us and our restaurants are constantly innovating to find ways to delight our guests and customers.
What are your plans for the next 12 months?
Domestic demand for staycations will remain a key focus for Pan Pacific Hotels Group in the next few months. This should be aided by the extension of the SingapoRediscover Vouchers to the end of the year, and we plan to continue promoting our staycation packages to locals.
F&B continues to be an important pillar for Singapore, and we will be moving forward with our Chef Profiling Programme to promote innovative cuisine and signature dishes found in our F&B offerings. We will line up creative promotions along this programme, especially targeting the special festive seasons that Singaporeans love to celebrate.
On the events and meetings front, we will take a renewed focus on our wedding products with specific branded themes and offerings, as we anticipate incoming demand from couples hoping to tie the knot with their loved ones. We will also continue to push hybrid-style corporate meetings through our EzyMeet package, as well as further our sustainability agenda in the MICE space.
While the domestic market remains a key focus for the short to medium term, Pan Pacific Hotels Group is also keeping our sights on long-term, sustainable growth. This has been our strategy even prior to the pandemic, and further expanding our global footprint in key markets around the world continues to be a strong focus for us.
These include key source market China, for which we are rolling out a targeted e-commerce strategy through our WeChat powerhouse. We have built a robust ecosystem to cater to Chinese consumers, providing them with destination and lifestyle content, offerings through our WeChat e-commerce store, and a fully developed WeChat mini programme for our global properties.
As a global hospitality company, it is vital for us to strengthen our pipeline and continue our push for sustainable hospitality, cutting-edge design and wellness in our modern world – reinforced with new technology that can meet the demands of our guests. As life slowly approaches the new normal, we remain focused on expanding our portfolio in prime locations around the world.
