Villa Hotels & Resorts currently operate five resorts in the Maldives and has been committed to sustainability since their foundation.
Two of their resorts have now received the Green Key award – Sun Island Resort and Spa (March 18, 2022); and Royal Island Resort and Spa (March 22, 2022). This award is considered a leading standard for excellence in environmental sustainability, focusing on tourism establishments adhering to high environmental standards; and informing and involving visitors to develop specific actions concentrated on natural resources and awareness on environmentally friendly practices. The award was designed for the travel and tourism industry and has been in existence since the early 1990s.
For Villa Hotels & Resorts, sustainability means managing the resorts following the company’s guiding principles, which are to adhere to environmentally friendly practices continuously. As a result, we have worked towards developing an ecologically friendly, sustainable, and responsible business, and considerable steps are put in place to minimize the resort operations’ impact on the environment.
For example, these two Villa resorts have measures in place to calculate carbon footprint annually, with targets to reduce carbon emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. Furthermore, environmental committees at the resorts help preserve nature and generate staff and guests’ awareness on social, cultural, economic, quality, human rights, health, and safety issues. In addition, the resort teams are actively monitoring the use of water and energy with planned actions to reduce them considerably.
For example, a variety of environmental events and activities are planned by our teams to preserve nature and the surrounding underwater world to help further protect the environment. Both Villa resorts have organized a #StopPlasticPollution cleanup dive on their house reefs. Furthermore, the dive centers’ are set to organize a beach and snorkeling cleanup of the resorts’ lagoon.
As the Maldives is one of the most endangered tourist destinations globally, environmental conservation and sustainability have always been a key element to the Villa Hotels and Resorts operations and integral in all that the resorts do. Since the establishment of Villa Hotels & Resorts in 1988, the resorts have worked to become more and more sustainable.
To achieve the Green Key award, Villa has maintained high environmental standards for their establishments through complex and rigorous documentation and frequent audits. Further, responsible teams comprehensively worked through stringent certification criteria to assure the resorts adhered to them, considering various factors such as sustainability, behavioral changes in guests, staff, and suppliers, social and economic considerations, and environmental conservation.
Sun Island Resort and Spa and Royal Island Resort and Spa are the first to receive Green Key awards in the Maldives. In addition, recently, we earned the WELL Health-Safety Rating seal for our resorts Paradise Island Resort and Spa, Sun Island Resort and Spa and Royal Island Resort and Spa through the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI)
