FOUNDER AND OWNER OF SONEVA, SONU SHIVDASANI HAS CHAMPIONED THE CONCEPT OF ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE LUXURY SINCE HE BEGAN BUILDING HIS FIRST HOTEL ON THE DESERTED MALDIVIAN ISLAND OF KUNFUNADHOO IN 1995. IN ADDITION TO THEIR THREE PIONEERING, ECO-LUXURY RESORTS, SONU AND HIS WIFE, EVA, ESTABLISHED THE NOT-FOR-PROFIT SONEVA FOUNDATION - SUPPORTING HIGH-IMPACT INITIATIVES ACROSS ASIA WITH A FOCUS ON ENVIRONMENTAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY.

Dispelling the myth that sustainability and luxury need to compete with each other, the Soneva brand has been built on the foundations of ‘Slow Life’ - an acronym that stands for Sustainable, Local, Organic, Wellness, Learning, Inspiring, Fun, Experiences.

This sense of mindfulness and respect for local communities, economies and the environment is part of Soneva’s very DNA. Our founders Katie and Amy spoke to Sonu about Soneva’s unique brand of ‘intelligent luxury’, and what the landscape of travel might look like, ‘post-pandemic’, if we keep our focus and commit to positive change…

What made you integrate sustainability into the DNA of Soneva right from the start, particularly as no-one else was really doing it at the time?

I first visited the Maldives with Eva in 1987 and fell in love with the place. I had never seen anything quite like it. Eva, who had been coming to the Maldives for modelling shoots in the late 1980s and early 1990s, loved the untouched, simple way of life.

We decided we wanted to open a resort like no other, whilst ensuring we protect the environment. We believe that a company must have a clear purpose beyond turning a profit. It must serve and contribute to the society in which it operates and should not negatively impact the environment in which it is located. Together we combined our respective experience in management, style and design to develop a resort that would satisfy our desire for a dream destination for those who liked to travel in luxurious style. We bought an abandoned resort on far flung 100-acre Kunfunadhoo Island in the Maldives and set about creating our dream.

I have spent my life working in the hotel industry and have devoted my career to building what is now a network of luxury resorts. I do not believe that this puts me at odds with conservation; but I am the first to say that the hotel and tourism sectors should admit where they have failed and take steps to bring about change.

There can be no doubt that we, as an industry, consume far more than our fair share of resources. But I believe that all companies, hotel businesses included, must have a purpose beyond profit. They must play a greater role in the world beyond just enriching their shareholders. I don't believe that this has to run counter to a successful business model, in fact, it can be central to it. We can find opportunities to make small positive changes that do not impact negatively on our profitability or our guests’ perception of our products, yet which can generate considerable good for both the environment and society. In fact, they can often enhance our guests’ experience. By taking bold steps we can fundamentally redress the balance between business and communities and shift back to the original purpose of the corporation as a service to society.

‘Slow Life’ is a guiding principle for all our Hosts. It is our moral compass, as well as our operating compass. Sustainability runs through our core and we always strive to limit the negative environmental impacts of our activities – which is both difficult, and yet critical, for a company which operates resorts in remote places of pristine natural beauty. Our slow life focus has led to levels of guest loyalty and repeat business that far surpass industry norms, and this tells me unequivocally that the values of a company matter to those who consume its products.

Teaching the next generation of environmental stewards

What challenges - if any - did you face when becoming a sustainable travel pioneer? Did people understand and embrace this from the get-go?

We faced many challenges. Generally people thought we were weird including a lot of our Hosts (At Soneva we do not have employees, we have Hosts. My role is the Guardian of the Culture, I believe that language is an important aspect of creating a culture and driving behaviour. Can you imagine a hotel with 350 employees and then a hotel with 350 Hosts. The guest experience is completely different.) We fought many battles in the early days; over time we developed a reputation and started to attract Hosts who shared our beliefs and values.

Our guests were more understanding, let me share with you a few examples:

Operating in remote locations requires our guests to travel long distances. On average, a guest's round trip will result in emissions of around 1 ton of CO2. Our guests have little choice but to fly to reach our remote locations. While emission free air travel is some way away, and until airlines have that technology, we made the decision to offset the emissions of every guest flight by placing a carbon levy of 2% on our guests’ bill. This small levy, based on the villa rate, lets the Soneva Foundation invest in projects that have positive environmental, social and economic impacts which offset carbon emissions from both guest flights and resort activities. We had no push back, our guests supported our initiative fully.

Let me share with you another example. In 2008 we decided to stop selling branded water and to only sell water bottled on site. Apart from the obvious ecological benefits of taking a linear process and making it circular; we would also achieve a huge financial saving. Instead of spending 20% of water revenues to buy that bottle of Vittel or Evian, our cost of sales reduced to 2% by taking our tap water and purifying it and adding minerals. This financial saving has funded 400 projects in 50 different countries giving 800,000 people access to clean water. Again we had no negative feedback from our guests.

Soneva water - filtered and plastic-free

Which sustainable travel initiative has been most successful?

There are many initiatives that have had a big impact in terms of sustainability. In many ways all are important as it is the sum of everything that creates the lasting impact. If I were to pick one, I would have to say the Myanmar Stoves Campaign. It ticks the boxes in so many ways. It reduces deforestation and thus CO2 emissions, it reduces smoke and soot inhalation and thus has huge health benefits, and it improves the disposable income of the families and creates jobs for our vendors.

In just four years it created a social value of USD 14 million and benefitted 140,000 people. That is something to be proud of. In February 2020, we launched Soneva Namoona, our flagship project that reimagines waste management in the Maldives: Reduce, Recycle, Inspire. Namoona means exemplary in Dhivehi, the language of the Maldives, which is our aim for this partnership with local islands.

In a nation with few municipal waste facilities and huge stress on the limited available land, the sea has traditionally been a dumping ground for local Maldivian islands, which was less problematic when most of the waste was organic. For today’s generation, that waste is plastic bottles, plastic packaging and aluminium cans.

At the heart of the initiative is Reduce, a radical reduction in the volume of plastic arriving on the islands. Soneva assisted the council of Maalhos to establish a water bottling plant that desalinates and mineralises sea water before bottling it in reusable glass bottles, using the same system as the water served to guests at Soneva resorts.

Recycling and responsible disposal of waste forms the second strand of the programme. Soneva recycles or reuses 90% of resort waste at the Eco Centro waste management centres.

Maalhos is the first island to open a Soneva sponsored Eco Centro with upgraded machinery that will include a woodchipper and a glass crusher.

The third component is to inspire a love of the ocean and the local environment. The belief is that through water sports, education and festivities that children will lose their fear of the ocean and learn to love it. If they love it, they are more likely to protect it. With a nod to both the inspiration of teen climate activist Greta Thunberg and the response to plastic waste from the global surfing community, Soneva is nurturing a new generation of ocean stewards.

What are your thoughts on the conflict between wanting to travel and explore once again post-Covid, versus the over-development and over-consumerism in tourism that we have seen in recent years?

Travel and flying are often highlighted as prime examples of human behavior that contribute to global warming. This needs to change with immediate effect if we are to hand over to the next generation a world similar to what we have been able to experience and love in our own lifetimes.

Whilst air travel will account for a bulk of an individual’s own ecological footprint, it today still accounts for about 2% of greenhouse gases. The damage it causes pales when one considers the contribution to global warming of agriculture, especially the beef industry, where the numbers are 10 to 20 times that of air travel. For both health and sustainability reasons 2 of our food and beverage key performance indicators over the past 24 months have been the reduction of beef and dairy. Our beef consumption has reduced by 90% over this period.

There are also some examples of tourism over-development such as the coast of Spain where developers constructed large concrete jungles that today remain ghost towns for most of the year. The local community lost out big time and their overall quality of life deteriorated. As the developers tended to be foreign, they generally engaged foreigners and the tourists tended to consume packaged products brought in from outside. Wherever local ingredients or resources were consumed, it was at the expense of the local community. So, in general, the profits of the operations were repatriated, salaries were spent back home, and the local community rarely benefitted from this new commerce. They just suffered from the inflationary pressures on certain qualities of life that they had taken for granted such as cheap seaside living, or fish, which they could no longer afford.

PWC has established a measurement index T.I.M.M. (Total Impact Monitoring & Measurement) that they are encouraging governments to use in order to drive behavioral change that avoids such examples in the future.

In spite of the above, I remain a strong advocate of the overall positive impact of travel and tourism and the key role it plays in conservation. Vast tracts of South and East Africa would now be farmland if it were not for the conservation efforts of the many lodges and camps whose tourists indirectly fund these efforts. Five years ago, President Bongo of Gabon transferred 11 million hectares of land from timber concessions and mining concessions to a National Park with a view to attracting tourists to visit.

Closer to home, the Government of the Maldives banned the fishing of both sharks and turtles. Part of the Maldives – Baa Atoll, where one of our resorts is located - has become a UNESCO Biosphere. The catalyst for these actions was the calculation that a shark or turtle swimming happily in the ocean was considerably more valuable alive than dead.

It will be vital for travel and tourism to have a net positive contribution to conservation, the environment as well as the community in order for this industry, which has been my life for the last 30 years, to survive in a post COVID-19 era.

A turtle in the protected biosphere of the Baa Atoll

What do you see as the future of Soneva in the post-Covid world and how will the properties adapt to the changing face of travel?

I believe that destinations that are true to their offering will continue to thrive and those that lose their individuality will suffer. We have seen that luxury in general and not just hospitality, has become very conventional. Luxury brands should do their utmost to avoid losing their individuality.

Our guests do not have much interest in acquiring material luxuries, rather they have an increasing thirst for knowledge and learning, they seek discretion, special access and surprise. They want meaning, authenticity and connection. Today people crave conviction, experiences, focus and depth, discovery, and understanding.

With climate change and its affects so apparent, the world is striving for real experiences. Living in the moment is everything. When guests go on holiday, we don’t want them to do the same thing they do at home – we want them to escape, to dream, to feel. For that you need to experience. I strongly believe that a successful business is the one that combines apparent contrasts and make these opposites compatible. When this is achieved, it creates an experience that is both unique and admired, one that immediately fosters loyalty from the guest.

The future of travel is about satisfying an increasingly sophisticated client who is looking to express his or her individuality and will be looking for destinations with distinct personality and character, such as Soneva. This is why we believe that after this crisis people will travel to unique destinations to share their moments with family. Soneva is very unique in this point and our guests are prepared to pay that extra amount for what we do so well. We will continue to do what we have been doing. We have a strategic competitive advantage as we are both owner and operator of our hotels so we can move quickly. We are flexible and we can create unique special experiences for our guests.

It is my sincere hope that some of the relevant sacrifices that we are now making are maintained even after we come through this crisis. It is my hope that some of the terrible habits that we have had to drop, will remain abandoned. As we recover and journey out of this crisis, we will reach a fork in the road. I hope that we will know where we want to go. The current global pandemic has highlighted how interconnected we are and how important it is that as humans on this planet, we break through our national boundaries and collaborate together in order to preserve life on earth as we know it.

If we do not change and just go back to business as usual after this crisis, it will be a sad, lost opportunity. All the suffering that we have been through over these past months will have been for nothing. This pandemic will end but the important question is whether the bond we have with the way we live and our daily reality has been sufficiently broken and whether we can attach ourselves to a new reality and a new way of doing things; or if we will just go back to our old ways.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: SONU SHIVDASANI

A VERY CONSCIOUS CHRISTMAS

MEET THE MENTOR: SUZANNE BAYLY-COUPE