Shangri-La Unveils Details of New Sustainability Report

Shangri-La Asia's 2012 Sustainability Report shows the company is making headway across its corporate social responsibility (CSR) focus areas.

Shangri-La International Hotel Management currently manages 78 hotels, and will open 36 more over the next three years, including 23 hotels in mainland China.

"With ongoing expansion in China and elsewhere, it can be challenging to balance CSR and commercial responsibilities," said Shangri-La International Hotel Management Ltd. President and CEO Greg Dogan, who also chairs the company's CSR Committee. "Our China hotels have collectively shown it's possible to drive social development and environmental efficiency while maintaining commercial viability."

Issued last week, the 2012 Sustainability Report outlines achievements in the fiscal years 2011 and 2012 and future steps in the company's CSR Focus Areas of environment, supply chain, stakeholder relations, employees and health and safety. It's been five years since the Hong Kong-based hotel company launched Sustainability, Shangri-La's social responsibility campaign. Shangri-La aligned its hotels to common CSR goals in 2009 and issued its first sustainability report in 2010 with the commitment to issue one every two years in pursuit of transparency.

Well ahead of 2015 targets, environmental and conservation achievements in 2012 include a 20% reduction in potable water consumption per guest night and 13% reduction in energy consumption per guest night across the group compared with 2010 levels. Even with an increase in total number of hotels, Shangri-La reduced CO2 emissions by 16% per guest night over the two-year period. A number of Shangri-La hotels also achieved international certifications and a wider adoption of occupational health and safety protocols, moving closer to the group goal of a fully Integrated Management System.

Ownership of CSR and sustainability lies with each individual hotel and progress is tracked via a CSR scorecard. In 2012, the average overall CSR score for a mainland China hotel was 71.2% compared with the average score of 63.5% for the 40 hotels located outside of mainland China covered in the report.

The 2012 report shows Shangri-La's mainland China hotels performed evenly and consistently across the group's five CSR focus areas. In addition, they nearly achieved the group target of 2% employment of people with disabilities (employing 1.98%), and 98% of Shangri-La's China hotel colleagues completed Shangri-La's new CSR training module, which was rolled out to 38,000 colleagues group-wide by 413 newly certified CSR ambassadors.

Sanctuary, Shangri-La's Care for Nature Project, was expanded from international resorts to urban hotels in mainland China with water conservation projects in Shenyang, Qingdao and Beijing; a Nature Reserve project in Xian, and a Care for Panda Project in Chengdu. All Shangri-La hotels are implementing strategic 10 to 15-year local community programmes in Education and Health through Embrace, Shangri-La's Care for People Project. Shangri-La's hotel colleagues rendered 60,000 volunteer hours in 2012 in support of these and other CSR projects.

Major CSR initiatives put in place last year included Shangri-La's Sustainable Seafood Policy, which was issued in January 2012 with the commitment to immediately cease serving shark fin in all of its operated restaurants. The company also instituted a Responsible Procurement Programme and introduced the Shangri-La Supplier Code of Conduct incorporating criteria that align with Shangri-La's Core Values and the ten principles of the United Nations Global Compact, which Shangri-La has been reporting progress on since 2012.

"We are proud of our people who continue to reflect 'from the heart' commitment to CSR, and appreciate the support of our suppliers and other stakeholders," said Dogan. "We know we have a long journey ahead, and there is much work to be done. But we are in this for the long-term."