Katathani Phuket Beach Resort: Green cost savings add up to huge community benefit

Katathani Phuket Beach Resort, a deluxe beachfront hotel and spa located on the secluded Kata Noi Bay, Phuket, Thailand, has been certified by Green Globe for the first time with an impressive 83% compliance score.

The high sustainability score by Katathani Phuket Beach Resort is an indication of the wealth of experience the resort has built over many years of looking after both the people and the environment of its idyllic destination.

In the last four years, the resort has saved nearly USD $3 million by implementing comprehensive sustainability projects. Just as importantly, a substantial portion of these savings is donated through the We Love the Hometown Foundation. Founded in 2007 by Katathani Phuket Beach Resort, the We Love Hometown Foundation (WLHF) is dedicated to carrying out projects that support, sustain and enhance local communities through education as well as community and employment engagement initiatives.

Initiatives and projects from WLHF include providing opportunities to ensure that local community members are able to take advantage of a range of jobs including transportation drivers, masseurs/masseuses, and tour staff, among others. The resort is committed to offering employment opportunities to local people with a policy of hiring a minimum of 25% of the total staff from the local community.

WLHF also offers educational and community support to local schools in the form of education on the environment as well as on culture and traditions through a variety of activities. Some of these include Katathani’s annual World Environmental Day Young Environmental Detectives program as well as an annual event on Thailand’s National Children’s Day during which staff from Katathani Phuket Beach Resort and The Shore at Katathani educate local school children as well as donating school supplies and awarding scholarships. The resorts also cultivate relationships with major universities, both inside and outside of Thailand, in order to offer internship opportunities to young people emerging in the hospitality industry.

WLHF is also active in cultural preservation and exchange. Katathani Phuket Beach Resort is proud of the richness of local and regional Thai culture and committed to preserving it and sharing it with guests, the community and the broader society. The resort funds and otherwise supports activities and programs that showcase Thai music, art, food and language. The resort financially supports and also sends ambassadors to participate in various cultural activities, such as the famous Phuket Vegetarian Festival.

Katathani Phuket Beach Resort is deeply concerned about protecting the environment. The resort’s Green Choice program allows guests to participate in reducing energy consumption by choosing not to have daily linen cleaning. In exchange, guests who make the green choice are rewarded with a voucher that can be used in resort shops or donated to WLHF. This successful program, just under two years old, is already a marked success.

Further protecting the environment from harmful chemicals, Katathani Phuket Beach Resort and The Shore at Katathani manufacture an exclusive line of Ko Green Products, which are all natural, organic, biodegradable, and phosphorus and nitrate- free. Unlike many conventional cleaning agents, these products are made without animal by-products, synthetic or chemical preservatives, resulting in a natural biodegradability that does not harm the environment.

Some of Katathani’s Ko Green products include:

• Klean& Natural: a natural all-purpose detergent
• Klean Lemon: washing up liquid made completely form biodegradable ingredients
• Klean Green: septic treatment agent proven to digest waste.

The resort acknowledges that the tourism industry drives considerable consumption of water and production of wastewater related to high occupancy levels and maintenance in the hotel. To guarantee that these impacts are kept to a minimum, Katathani Phuket Beach Resort and The Shore at Katathani have implemented ways to ensure water consumption is effectively monitored and managed. To reduce the negative impacts of the large amounts of wastewater, the resort treats all grey water at its treatment facility so that it may be reused in lawn and garden maintenance.

In addition to treating the wastewater produced by its resorts, Katathani also treats the wastewater of the surrounding community at no charge in order to support the local community and ensure that no wastewater reaches the sea.

Katathani’s supply of freshwater comes from its own reservoir, which greatly spares the community’s municipal supply. To do this, the resort purpose built the reservoir with a capacity to provide over 120,000,000 liters of annual water supply.

Green Globe is the worldwide sustainability system based on internationally accepted criteria for sustainable operation and management of travel and tourism businesses. Operating under a worldwide license, Green Globe is based in California, USA and is represented in over 83 countries. Green Globe is an Affiliate Member of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). For information, please visit greenglobe.com