We are witnessing a Golden Age of travel, with more and more people realising .. the importance of maintaining a healthy work life balance. India ranked seventh in the world in terms of travel and tourism’s total contribution to GDP in 2017.
In CY2017, foreign tourist arrival in India stood at 10.177 million and reached 2.12 million in CY 2018 (up to February), making the country earn foreign exchange of around US$ 2.706 billion, from the tourism sector.
This in turn sets the ball rolling for the hospitality industry providers and opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.
However, while the hospitality industry takes advantage of the business opportunity these travellers bring, they must address their responsibility to the communities where they live and work too. The very future of hospitality industry depends on a planet that can continue to support and sustain its growth.
Being responsible to social and environmental stewards, needs to be engrained in the culture of service providers. As travel industry leaders, Global and Indian chains of hospitality have both the opportunity and the duty to create an agenda for a common, united action.
Navjit Ahluwalia, Country Head Hilton, on completion of Global Week of service, a yearly property of Hilton World-wide said, “Being in a business of serving people, we have so many opportunities each day to touch lives in more ways than we can imagine, and with that privilege, comes great responsibility. Our duty to uphold the highest standards of hospitality lies to not only our guests who walk through our hotel doors, but also to the communities where we live, work and travel in.”
Since 2012 Hilton team members have completed nearly 15000 projects worldwide and contributed more than 804,620 hours of community service. Projects range from evolving creative ways to eliminate food waste, to disaster relief projects, to mentoring young people — all highlighting how a career in hospitality can change lives,” Ahluwalia added.
Hilton’s ‘Global Week of Service’ is a celebration of community efforts supporting Travel with Purpose, and their journey towards their goals for 2030, which broadly summarises their commitment to double the investment in social impact and cut down their environmental footprint in half.
With this commitment, Hilton will become the first major hotel company to institute sciencebased targets to reduce carbon emissions and send zero soaps to landfill.
Hilton properties have already removed plastic straws from all their managed properties in India, and are simultaneously at different stages of the process to remove use of single-use plastic from rooms, F&B, operations for both front and back of of the hotel.
