Carmen Ng who is the sustainability manager of Langham Hospitality Group discusses the sustainability progress Langham has made as well as future goals for both the company and the industry.

　　Carmen Ng has more than 15 years of professional experience in environmental sustainability in a number of different industries, so when she joined Langham Hospitality Group a few years ago — initially as environmental manager, whereas now she is sustainability manager — she brought a broader perspective to the company. She spearheaded the launch of Connect, the Hong Kong-based group’s overarching CSR program that includes initiatives such as Connect Conferences, which focuses on green meetings, and coordinating volunteer efforts for employees at all of Langham’s 22 managed hotels across The Langham, Langham Place and Eaton brands.

　　HOTELS recently sat down with Ng to discuss the sustainability progress Langham has made as well as future goals for both the company and the industry.

　　HOTELS: Among your achievements thus far with Langham, what do you see as most significant and why?

　　Carmen Ng: I’ve been part of the company for 3.5 years now. I was first environmental manager. My background is really environmental science, but my previous job also involved some of the sustainability areas. The company saw the need to expand [its sustainability focus], so that’s why we launched a program in 2011 called Connect, which is our sustainability program. By rolling out that program, I think the key achievement is cultural change within the group. To be honest, when I first joined the company, in my office I would see very simple things like people not separating their waste, not turning off their computer or office lighting, but now they do it automatically. There are also some good numbers to share. Three years ago we didn’t really have a strategic way to promote employee volunteering. We had about 3,000 staff at that time, and we had 2,000-something community-service hours by colleagues. Last year, we had about 7,000 staff, and we achieved over 8,500 community-service hours, which is quite a significant change.

　　HOTELS: So Connect encompasses community service as well as sustainability projects?

　　Ng: We have four focus areas under Connect. Environment is one of the areas. The second area is community. The third area is colleagues, which is about health and safety and wellness. The fourth area is governance — are we accountable as a business partner? We’re not doing all four focus areas at the same time. For example, we have been working on environment for five years; we have a really good foundation by participating in EarthCheck. Community has come in the last two or three years. Now we can take more time to look into colleagues and governance.

　　HOTELS: When was Connect Conferences launched, and why was this initiative seen as important to offer?

　　Ng: That was launched last year. Before that, sustainability was more about all these things we do in the back of the house — recycle for our guests, energy-efficient lighting. The thinking was that the guest should not really be aware of this. Now we see guests are actually more aware, and they want to be part of it. That’s why we launched this last October, to give meeting planners an option to engage their delegates to join this sustainability journey. For example, before we recycled for our guests, but now instead we put the waste-segregation bins in the conference area so delegates can be part of it and do the separation by themselves.

　　HOTELS: As you alluded to earlier, part of your job is overseeing grassroots volunteering hotel associates do worldwide. Are there some prominent themes among these efforts?

　　Ng: We set up a community policy two years ago that guides all the hotels. For the whole group, the themes we encourage hotels to work on are art, children and environment. The purpose for environment is very straightforward. For children, it is about giving them proper education and the right values. For art, it’s part of our business because we have all different types of art in our hotels. Also, we definitely encourage hotels to support the local community, because these are broad issues. Each city will have different issues. In China or Hong Kong, we will work with the elderly. In Chicago, we might work with the homeless or food banks. Our hotels in Australia and Canada might work very closely with children’s hospitals. It can be very localized.

　　HOTELS: Given that much of your past experience was not in hospitality, what do you see as some untapped or under-explored sustainability projects the hospitality industry should look into more?

　　Ng: When I first joined the company and looked at the overall hospitality industry, it’s kind of behind compared to other businesses. But the hospitality industry has improved in the past few years very quickly. Of course there will be more inquiries from our guests and clients in this area. There also will likely be more support from governments as well as legislation requirements. For example, our Australian hotel is now facing a carbon tax; that’s an incentive to the hotel to be energy-efficient. I think the hospitality industry can go much further in terms of sustainable business because it involves so many areas — in the guestrooms, in F&B and in the spa. I think there’s a simple message: simple actions can create something good, and a hotel will have a lot of different types of opportunities to do these things.

　　HOTELS: What are some of your main sustainability goals for Langham going forward?

　　Ng: I would like to demonstrate that Langham can be a sustainable luxury brand. Usually people have the concept that luxury is not sustainable, but if we can demonstrate that we can be sustainable and luxury at the same time, Langham will be very successful. It’s very easy to position Eaton as sustainable, it is associated with value, and we can put, for example, a soap dispenser in the guestroom. But would that be acceptable for a luxury brand? We could use a very nice dispenser that would look like luxury. I see a lot of resorts doing it, but it takes time to process. But if we’re successful in this way, that would be a really good story.

　　HOTELS: What noteworthy sustainability initiatives does Langham have on the horizon?

　　Ng: One of my initiatives is to ensure all our hotels participate in EarthCheck because we want to make sure we walk the talk and we have a third party to monitor our performance. We usually encourage a hotel to join the program after its first two years open, because part of the EarthCheck program requires data, so you would need at least one year of data to provide to EarthCheck. The next level is to engage our different stakeholders overall and how we should incorporate our stakeholders’ opinions into our decision-making process. That will be something big in the next few years we will need to work on, and it takes time.