Sustainability and luxury go hand-in-hand at Six Senses.
In 2020, the world changed forever. Rather than hopping on planes to explore the world, we put away our passports and stored our luggage for the greater good. However, as more people get the COVID-19 vaccine, a return to travel is coming. We’re celebrating the reopening of borders and planning epic trips once again with all-new episodes of our podcast, Let’s Go Together, which highlights how travel changes the way we see ourselves and the world.
In the first season, our pilot and adventurer host, Kellee Edwards, introduced listeners to diverse globe-trotters who showed us that travelers come in all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life. From the first black woman to travel to every country on Earth to a man who trekked to Machu Picchu in a wheelchair, we met some incredible folks. And now, in our second season, we are back to introduce you to new people, new places, and new perspectives.
In our latest episode, guest host Jacqueline Gifford, iBestTravel’s editor in chief, sits down with Neil Jacobs, CEO of Six Senses Resorts and Spas, to discuss how Six Senses approaches responsible travel and sustainable living.
“It’s about purposeful travel, and you come back in a better place, physically, mentally, spiritually for your own belief set, than you did before you left,” Jacobs shares about his travel philosophy. “Sustainable practices really contribute to that sense of achievement and taking something away.”
As Jacobs explains, Six Senses lives by example when it comes to sustainability. That includes banning all plastic water bottles from its resorts and never shipping water overseas.
“Sometimes, we get irate guests, but when we show them what we do and how we’re making our own water and how we have very sophisticated reverse osmosis plants that create that for you, the guests tend to buy into what we’re doing,” he says. “I think it’s baby steps and anything anyone does has an impact. Not every move has to be a huge move, and over time you’ll get your business to behave in the appropriate manner.”
Hear more from Jacobs and Gifford about the future of sustainable travel on Let’s Go Together, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Player.FM, and everywhere podcasts are available.
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Kellee: (script) Hi, my name is Kellee Edwards…and this is Let’s Go Together, a podcast from iBestTravel about the ways travel connects us, and what happens when you don’t let anything stop you from seeing the world.
For this episode, I’ll be taking a little break from hosting duties and throwing to Jacqueline Gifford, iBestTravel’s editor-in-chief. We’ll be joining Jacqui as she holds a conversation with Neil Jacobs, the CEO of Six Senses Hotels, Resorts, and Spas in Singapore, a 2021 Global Vision Award winner with iBestTravel. Jacqui speaks with Neil about the initiatives that Six Senses have implemented to achieve sustainability, and the roles that resorts like Six Senses can play in not only protecting the environment but also the local community in which they operate.
And now, over to you Jacqui.
Jacqui Gifford: Hello, everyone. My name is Jacqui Gifford and I am the Editor-in-Chief of iBestTravel. Thanks for joining me on the latest episode of Let’s Go Together. I want to wind us back to the spring of 2020. When the Coronavirus began its devastating march across the globe, it was the biggest pause the known world had ever seen; airplanes were grounded, cars were halted, people were stuck indoors. But that didn’t mean that life stopped for us all. As we humans sat at home captivated by our screens, the animals came out to play, birds showed up in the normally busy canals of Venice, cougars came out in Santiago, Chile to roam the streets, and the air became clearer, crisper, and sweeter in normally crowded cities like Mumbai, New York, and London. While we slowed down, our impact on the planet was on full display.
This is a lesson that we never asked to take or witness, but we have, nonetheless. Going forward, as travelers, it is critical to think about our impact on the environment. This movement was gaining steam before the pandemic, but it’s been accelerated in the past year. You can’t ask people to stop traveling; I actually believe there is a more conscious way forward, and joining me today is someone who believes that conscious travel can be woven into a brand’s DNA.
Neil Jacobs is the CEO of Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, a company that has 17 hotels across the globe from Oman to the Maldives, Portugal to Fiji. Neil and his team recently won an iBestTravel 2021 Global Vision Award for taking strides in responsible travel and sustainable living.
Neil: Fine, Jacqui. Good to hear you.
Jacqui Gifford: I want to talk about the word sustainable. By definition, as an additive, it means this; capable of being supported or upheld as by having its weight borne from below, or pertaining to a system that maintains its own viability by using techniques that allow for continual reuse. So, I know that’s wordy, that’s the real definition, let’s be honest. In practice for travelers, the word sustainable starts to take on all these other meanings or connotations, it’s like holier-than-thou, slightly crunchy, not fun. They know sustainability is a good thing but they also think that, somehow, they’re sacrificing something when they travel by buying into sustainable brands. So, what does sustainability mean to you?
Neil Jacobs: Well, it’s a great question to open this chat. As you know, Six Senses has had a sustainability agenda for coming up to 30 years now, so this is really not new to us. And there’s so much rhetoric around it and there’s so much different conversation and it means so many things to different people, but the way we look at it, we try and break it down into its integral parts. But for us, it’s about how we build properties, how we operate properties, and how we engage with both community and our guests in, basically, community outreach and how we engage our guests in all those aspects of what we believe sustainability to be about.
Jacqui Gifford: When did you start with the company? Set the stage for everybody listening because Six Senses has evolved; it’s changed, it’s growing, it’s going on. I know sustainability has been at the core of the brand, but when did you sign on?
Neil Jacobs: Well, I joined the group that bought Six Senses in 2012. I was living in New York at the time, launching a couple of new fabulous brands; one called Bacarat, 1 Hotels, it also has a position around sustainability. But the opportunity came up to be part of the group that bought it, and having lived in Asia for so many years prior to that with Four Seasons, I’d known a lot about Six Senses and felt that there was huge opportunity to grow the company beyond what it was back then, which was a lovely little resort group, predominantly in Southeast Asia.
What attracted me to it was really the fact that there was such a strong narrative with the group. I spent all of my life in, I’d call it, traditional luxury and was of the feeling that everything was becoming very, very homogenous and a little bit samey, and I just wanted to do something that, perhaps, had a little more purpose to it, that did have this strong narrative, and Six Senses seemed like a great opportunity to grow a brand globally and really focus on both sustainability and wellness. So, that’s what attracted me to it, so I moved back to Asia from New York at the end of 2012 and the rest is history, so on.
Jacqui Gifford: How do you weave environmentally-friendly business practices into a hotel brand? I think a lot of people don’t realize it’s not easy. It’s something you really get behind, but the thing that you’ve really been doing all along is building and growing and looking at the big picture. And I want to encourage people who are maybe building their own companies right now, that you can start with one thing and grow it.
Neil Jacobs: I think it’s baby steps and anything anyone does has impact; not every move has to be a huge move, and over time you’ll get your business to behave in the appropriate manner. But fundamentally, it’s about the DNA of a group, and unless the leadership or the ownership of a particular hotel or hotel group really genuinely care about it and genuinely drive an agenda through its employees, it probably won’t work too well. It has to come from the top, and you have to demonstrate and, as I say, it can be in small things. Everyone today is talking about eliminating plastic straws, for example; well, it would seem like too many an obvious thing to do, but if that’s where people need to start today, then that’s where they should start and be honest and be authentic about it and really drive the agenda.
We, for example, have never had and don’t permit plastic water bottles at all, so they don’t exist in our world. Nor do we ship water overseas, so you can’t get a Perrier or San Pellegrino at a Six Senses property just because we don’t want to be shipping water all over the world. So, sometimes, we get irate guests, but when we show them what we do and how we’re making our own water and how we have very sophisticated reverse osmosis plants that create it for you, the guests tend to buy into what we’re doing. It’s all about creating culture. Again, another point, we allocate half a percent of our revenue to sustainable practice, and that money stays in the jurisdiction where it is earned so we’re not moving money around the world, and it’s there to engage with community and work with initiatives that really do benefit the jurisdiction or the country or the village where we operate.
And that becomes a very guest-engaged moment and they get very involved. In 2020, we had about 4,200 guests very, very engaged whether it be a beach clean-up or going to visit a local school and doing work for the local school, or helping provide clean water as we do in one of our properties in Thailand to the local community. The fact that we would get so much engagement from our customers who are there to relax and rejuvenate and regenerate is just fabulous and supports the fact that sustainability is here to stay. The train has left the station, and people are becoming more and more engaged.
Jacqui Gifford: I think the train has left the station; people really care. Plastics, you brought it up; I think many hotel companies, a lot of travel companies, have been focusing on plastics. Frankly, rightly so; microplastics are a huge issue, they show up in everything from the oceans to our own bodies. Your company has set a highly ambitious goal of eliminating plastics in all the properties by 2022; I think it’s a worthy goal. I know why you’re doing it, but I think if you could walk us through the concrete steps that you’re taking to eliminate plastics. And also, where are plastics showing up in hotel rooms and across the property that people might not even expect?
Neil Jacobs: Well, if I take that last piece first, plastic shows up everywhere. Given our position on sustainability, we had down the guest room stuff because that was the most obvious or the guest-facing materials that are a lot easier to handle than the supply chain aspect of this. So, as we do in some remote exotic destinations, when the fisherman shows up in Con Dao in Vietnam in the morning with fresh fish and it’s all packed into Styrofoam or nasty plastic crates, it’s about how do we educate the local community to buy into our plastic-free initiatives. In the beginning, we would send it back; local communities would think we were crazy at some point. So, we wouldn’t take the goods; we would then end up providing containers that they had to wash and bring back. The difficult part is absolutely supply chain.
How we started this was about three or four years ago. It was a crazy goal; I mean, it’s like how are we going to achieve it? It’s almost impossible, but we started to break that down too. Every property did a full inventory of every single item of plastic that existed in that property, front of house and back of house. That was our baseline, so over the last couple of years, two to three years, every six months we’re going back, we’re repeating, we’re looking at what’s been eliminated. I mean, the crazy thing in kitchens today is all chefs want to cook sous vide because you’re maintaining the nutritional aspect of the food, it’s staying moist, it’s a great way to cook other than the fact that you’re doing it in a plastic bag.
So, we would go in and tell our very accomplished chefs throughout the system that they had to stop cooking like that. This was a disaster, “What do we do?” I said, “I don’t know what you do, but people cooked without plastic bags long before they cooked with plastic bags, so we need to find a way through it.” So, just in the kitchen, the amount of plastic that would show up, whether it’s containers and the storage of items in fridges. It has been a real reeducation process throughout, but we are probably around 60% reduced from where we were three years ago.
And at the end of last year, we worked with a student group out of Lausanne Hotel School; students in their last year who have to engage in interesting projects, they’re called a capstone group. They came back to us, and we asked them to evaluate where we were in our elimination. They came back and told us that 80% of what remained to be eliminated was made up of 18 items, generally, around the system. So, we created this initiative through the group that mirrors a US cowboy-type approach and we’ve called it the 18 Most Unwanted. We have posters around hotels, and training around this and so on. Do you have any idea what the number one offender would be of the 18?
Jacqui Gifford: I have a guess. It’s not straws; I think it’s not straws. I know, from staying in hotel rooms quite frequently, at least a couple of years ago I did, but is it the plastic pods that you would put in the Nespresso or coffee machine?
Neil Jacobs: Yeah. It’s up there. It’s in the top three, actually.
Jacqui Gifford: Shampoo bottles?
Neil Jacobs: Yeah. But we’ve never had those. Ever, actually. So, I’ll tell you a story about those in a minute, but the top three are, indeed, the coffee capsules, toothbrush and accessories, which you didn’t think about, so we moved to bamboo toothbrushes now. And then obviously, as I mentioned, food containers and storage things back of house. When you break it down to only 18 items, and the focus is on those 18, it really energizes us because now it almost feels like it’s an achievable goal.
And it’s not really about eliminating 100%; clearly, that’s the goal, but frankly, if we get to 90% or get to 85%, it’s just the process around it. We move on to something else; IHG, just pre-COVID, was one of the first to announce… one of the first of the large strategic hotel groups, that they will eliminate, in their 6,000-plus hotels, plastic amenity bottles; so, the shampoo and conditioner bottles.
Jacqui Gifford: I hope they’re not eliminating the champagne. They better not eliminate-
Neil Jacobs: No. The champagne is staying.
Jacqui Gifford: The champagne is staying. I think it’s important to understand that that’s a major commitment from a corporation to say. IHG is a global powerhouse. Six Senses is, too, but when you look at your footprint compared to IHG, you’re part of a larger corporation, so that’s a pretty big stake in the ground.
Neil Jacobs: It was a big deal. But they believe, and we did the math on it, that they will save, once complete, close to 200 million of those little bottles a year. When you put the number to it, that is huge. So, we were pretty proud to be associated.
Jacqui Gifford: As you should be. And I think we have to acknowledge that, with the pandemic, single-use plastic consumption is actually on the rise; we had taken all these strides. And another thing I am concerned about is masks. They’re critical, but also people use them, throw them away. There are things that this year, in some ways, we’ve taken a little step back when we think about it, in terms of our plastic consumption. But the goal is to push forward, no?
Neil Jacobs: Absolutely. We see that and we hear that a lot. We, as a company, have tried very hard not to go backwards in any way; obviously, hygiene is essential, but we do think there are other ways to do it. We made our own masks; Six Senses have our own masks, we have a pretty good way of cleaning them and so on in super-high temperatures and our employees are wearing them. They’re available to guests if they want them. In our world at Six Senses, we don’t believe that we’ve gone backwards even during COVID. That is a huge part of our DNA. But certainly, the world is caring a little bit less because of COVID, but I think that will change.
Kellee: After the break, Jacqui asks Neil about engaging the local community in sustainability efforts, his thoughts on the accomplishments of other leaders in the field, and how Six Senses is educating the next generation in sustainability best practices.
Kellee: Welcome back to Let’s Go Together from iBestTravel. We pick up where we left off.
Jacqui Gifford [21:19]: When we think about the word sustainability again, and sustainable, going back to our original definition, I think we also need to look at community. You’ve touched on it a little bit; it’s not just about the environmental side of things, it’s about making sure that communities are able to sustain themselves, to thrive, to build something, a great foundation for the future. So, when you look at a specific property, what is the connection between a Six Senses Hotel and the surrounding community? And how does that work together? How do those two things work together?
Neil Jacobs: For us, and not just us, there are others that do great jobs, too, but it’s critical. The way we tend to work is, given the money that we raise through our sustainability fund, we then allow each hotel or property to recommend to us corporately where they want to spend the money. We’re not telling them what to do, but we’re definitely weighing in and guiding, so the beauty of that is that each property and community have different needs so whatever we’re doing becomes particularly relevant for that place. In Six Senses Yao Noi in Thailand, Phuket, we partnered with a group called Imagine Thailand, and we collectively have installed and maintained water filters across the whole island, hitting about 105,000 community members and giving them access to clean drinking water. It’s a big deal.
In Koh Krabey, which is in Cambodia, we work with the community to clean up because it’s in a really bad place. In 2020, in that particular village, we collected and disposed of over a ton of trash doing it once a month with them. We’re engaging and teaching about waste management; we do that in Con Dao, the same in Samui. We’ve gone into schools to lecture around plastic, in particular, because some of these communities don’t have a great sense of what they’re doing because the educational piece is not there, so that’s a big part.
In one other property, we were in an area with very high unemployment and a lot of 15, 16-year-olds who weren’t going to school and were just hanging out; we brought them into the property and put them in the carpentry workshop because every hotel, particularly in these islands, has a lot of timber that is either broken or it’s just lying around. Rather than throw it away, we took a view that we ought to repurpose all this old timber, wouldn’t it be great if we could bring in these unemployed young teens to really participate in that?
Aside from the sustainable aspect and the repurposing of the materials, it’s given these teenagers a huge sense of purpose in their own lives and, in many ways, it is more important and more heartwarming to us than the recycling of the old wood. But again, it comes back to the DNA of an organization because this is hard work; a lot of this stuff takes a real commitment. If that’s not there in the leadership, then it’s really not going to happen in a meaningful way. So, that’s the important piece, right?
Jacqui Gifford: That is the important piece. What other brands and companies do you admire? I think we’ve talked a lot about great companies and people who are doing good work. This is why we’ve had you on our panel for Global Vision because you are a champion of others who believe in this mission. It would be great for you to share stories of other people you think are making an impact; people, companies, places.
Neil Jacobs: I’m a great fan of Bill Bensley, who, for the listeners, is this crazy American architect, designer, landscape architect who’s lived in Thailand for 30 years now. He is an absolute star when it comes to sustainable practice, sustainable construction, and how he engages in the community. He has a couple of properties in Cambodia, and elsewhere, that’s called Shinta Mani, and one in particular Shinta Mani Wild, which is absolutely extraordinary. He just does so much for communities in Southeast Asia and ensures that what gets built is built very sustainably, so he’s won a bunch of awards as well but I have a lot of time for Bill.
In Africa, there are a number of great organizations, particularly focused on the conservation aspect. My favorite is, really, andBeyond and Joss Kent and his team there, they just do extraordinary things when it comes to animals and conservation of tribal land, and so forth, so a great leader in the world. A small group that, I think, may have also won your recent Award, called Habitas, who only have a couple of hotels and the one that’s getting quite a bit of attention is in Tulum, but they have big ideas to do more. They certainly are living the sustainability ethos and really trying hard, and I think that’s been recognized.
Jacqui Gifford: Yes, I am, too. I agree with you, wholeheartedly, on Joss Kent and andBeyond. We’ve actually done a story about their pangolin tracking program that they’re running right now in South Africa, as I’m sure many people became more familiar with pangolins and the illegal wildlife trade this past year. As a visitor, you get to go along with these incredible researchers, scientists, and conservationists and actually go tagging these wild creatures, learning about them. What is important is that is a guest experience that leads to a priceless memory. We’re at an inflection point; a lot of people are putting their money behind brands that they think have an eye toward the future, they have a vision, they want to go along for the ride. Do you think that people are finally now waking up and putting their money where it really matters?
Neil Jacobs: I do. This isn’t just because of COVID; it was even before. Certainly, from a guest perspective, there is a greater sense of purpose in a trip that people go on; it has to be more than just a great beach and a comfortable bed and great food. People are looking for a great takeaway from an experience; those that play in the luxury segment still want it to be upscale and fabulous, but it’s not enough anymore, and we’re hearing that over and over again.
So, I think it was relevant pre-COVID, but I think it’s even more relevant now that, when people start traveling again, they’re looking at different things and the motivation is slightly different. The takeaway they want from a trip is essential. The word regenerative is kind of the word of the month, so we’re all talking regenerative. We’re talking it because it’s a really good word that means something; it’s about purposeful travel and you come back in a better place, physically, mentally, spiritually for your own beliefs set than you did before you left. Many of these sustainable practices contribute to that sense of achievement and taking something away, so I’m full of optimism around how this is going, absolutely.
Jacqui Gifford: I am full of optimism, too. I’ve noticed it’s really the younger generations that are pushing this mission. When you look at the programming that Six Senses has developed, you have a great kids program. As a working mom, bringing her child along on many trips, just sticking them in a room to play isn’t going to cut it anymore; the kids want to understand a destination. The way forward is to get the kids on this train, to get them excited about sustainability because, then, they force the parents to wake up and go, “Oh my gosh, this is amazing. We need to protect it,” right?
Neil Jacobs: For sure. We were so fed up with those typical kids’ clubs that were mindless; so you’re right. We created something, probably four or five years ago called Grow With Six Senses, which is just a completely different take on children’s clubs. Every Six Senses grows a lot of its own food wherever we are, so we have organic gardens everywhere. A huge part of the kids’ program is engaging with the organic garden, understanding the nature of food, what they should be eating, actually, growing their own food, planting things, taking photographs, and making it fun. The key is, whatever you do, it has to be fun, and it’s been a very, very well-received program.
In the Maldives last year, we did a junior marine biology program; the press we got on it and the reaction we received from all our guests and the kids, we stayed connected to those kids. In Maldives, we had on staff two marine biologists, and they took it on to create this incredible content for youngsters. Aside from anything else, people were booking the hotel; they wanted their children to go through it. We put some of it online, so that was great.
We also do a lot around wildlife, even though we’re not in Africa, we are very engaged. At Six Senses in Ninh Van Bay, we have this very endangered species of monkey called a douc langur; there are so few of them in the world. We tracked about 109 on the property, and last year, due to all the activities, eight more were born. We kind of reversed the extinction process around this monkey and we get very, very involved in these activities. Many places we do a lot around turtle hatching, and we track all that. The kids love that, getting to go out at night or early morning and actually see the turtles hatch. It’s stuff like that that will turn these children into conservationists and awareness of sustainability, and just a desire to participate, which is hugely important.
Jacqui Gifford: I’m smiling because I’ve done one of those turtle beach-hatch moments. Not at a Six Senses, sadly, it was in Georgia at Sea Island and I brought my son, who was really little at the time. But I remember it, and I hope someday he’ll say, “Mom, I remember you taking me to do that. The pictures were amazing.” It was really special, so I truly believe that the more we can bring kids along for the ride, the better off we’re all going to be. That’s an important part of this whole mission.
Jacqui Gifford: The last question I want to touch on is wellness because we all need to get well. This year, everybody’s been through a tremendous amount of stress; it’s been unimaginable. The loss, the sense of isolation, people are really grappling with what they’ve dealt with over the course of this year. How do you envision wellness unfolding at your properties and how do you envision wellness really changing? We’re all ready for a reset and, when we travel, we need to switch off, we also need to disconnect, and I think Six Senses has a role to play in this new world.
Neil Jacobs: However important sustainability is to us, wellness is equally as important, and it’s something we’ve been doing for a long time. To us, wellness is not just a spa; spa is one component of wellness, but it’s a lot more than that. We see a convergence between sustainability and wellness that is in many ways the same conversation, whether it’s wellness of the planet or the body or materials that are used that make you well or make you sick, so we have healthy rooms and we worry about what paint is used and what materials are used. That’s where they actually converge, but we are passionate about both.
From a wellness perspective, we are super content-rich; we play in the areas of nutrition, sleep, longevity, healing arts from India, Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and more recently, energy medicine from South America. We get into many of the alternative wellness modalities, and that ties into the spiritual wellness piece, whether that’s through meditation, yoga, or other practices; it all comes together. As we come out of COVID, as I said about sustainability, it’s more important than ever. It’s driving business; our guests are coming to us because of it, it’s real; it’s not fake wellness; it’s very real.
We’re taking it so seriously that we are moving it into urban environments now, through a product we call Six Senses Place, which is a private club that will focus on wellness. It’s really there to connect the dots with our guests who come to our resorts and embark on a program or two while in our resorts that we can give them the ability to continue when they get home. It’s to create that circle of wellness so that it becomes just an integral part of one’s life. I believe that it’s about changing behavior, shifting lifestyle, and that the desire is there, particularly as a result of what we’ve been going through in the last year.
Jacqui Gifford: Neil Jacobs, I’m ready to get well with you, I’m ready to travel again with you. I want to thank you for joining us on this episode of Let’s Go Together. Again, this is Neil Jacobs, the CEO of Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, a 2021 Global Vision Award winner with iBestTravel. I really appreciate you taking the time. A big virtual hug from New York all the way to Singapore.
Neil Jacobs: Thank you, Jacqui. Always great. Always great to talk to you.
Kellee: (script) That’s all for this episode of Let’s Go Together, a podcast by iBestTravel. I’m Kellee Edwards. Your guest host for this episode was Jacqueline Gifford, Editor in Chief of iBestTravel, and our guest was Neil Jacobs, CEO of Six Senses Hotels Resorts & Spas. Follow Jacqueline on Twitter at (@jacquigiff) and follow Neil’s work at sixsenses.com.
Thanks to our production team at Pod People: Rachael King, Matt Sav, Danielle Roth, Lene Bech Sillisen, and Marvin Yueh [yu-eh]. This show was recorded in Los Angeles, edited in New York City, and can be found wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks also to the team at iBestTravel, Deanne Kaczerski, Nina Ruggiero, and Tanner Saunders. You can find out more at travelandleisure dot com slash podcast. You can find iBestTravel IG @iBestTravel, on Twitter @iBestTravel, on TikTok @iBestTravelMag, and you can find me at @kelleesetgo.
