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Bahrain Tribune 19 June, 2004 With the dry days of summer wringing the juice out of the Kingdom’s tourism industry, talk has turned once more to exploring ways and means to promote environmentally- sound hotel management and eco-tourism in the Kingdom.
There are no efforts to promote eco-tourism, say travel industry representatives and efforts by hotels to do so are almost as slender as the continuous incorporation of eco-friendly management into the day-to-day running of hotels on the island.
As with all industrial sectors, the five- and seven-star hotels seem to be more informed and have more eco-sensitive facilities and general practices incorporated into their management.
The Ritz-Carlton, for example, has carved a niche for itself as a property that has sensitively landscaped its grounds, using indigenous plants and grass types that consume less water and uses recycled water to maintain the greenery.
The beach-front hotel has become something of a tourist attraction since its man-made lagoons attract migrating birds and flocks of flamingoes and herons are not an unusual sight in season.
The PR Manager of the Diplomat Radisson SAS hotel, John Losasso, told the Tribune that the hotel used recycled water to maintain its gardens.
“We give special training to the staff and every new person joining the Radisson SAS group is handed a manual with techniques to conserve water and other valuable resources mentioned,” he said.
The Diplomat hotel also collects batteries for recycling but the dilemma is that there are no battery-recyling facilities.
“We are close to becoming an 80 per cent paper-free administration, but as in all hotels, some work has to be on paper which cannot be helped. Wherever possible we have used energy saving bulbs and we make it a point to switch off the computers when not in use,” he said.
Most of the five-star hotels are run by international hotel organisations. They are mostly based in Europe or the Americas, their eco-friendly methods of operation cannot be implemented without modification into the region’s hotel industry as many factors including environment and recycling facilities differ locally.
The Training Manager at The Regency Intercontinental Hotel, Sam Verghese, said: “We have designed an in-house ‘Eco Logo’ which we put up at various points in the hotel so that clients are aware that we are an eco-friendly hotel.”
The hotel holds monthly environmental meetings with staff from each department. To reduce the noise pollution caused by pumps, the hotel has installed reduced noise pumps in the plant room. The hotel collects bread apart from paper, cans, bottles and plastics.
“We prefer using ozone machines to get rid of odour instead of air freshners which contain aerosols. We have installed flush bottles (filled with ordinary water) in all of our restrooms to save water when the flush is used,” he said.
Still in the planning stage is the installation of large capacity containers to segregate the recyclable garbage from the hotel everyday. The hotel has separate containers for paper, plastics and cans in each department, but the effort goes in vain when the garbage collectors come over and take the garbage away altogether without segregating it. What the hotel intends to do is call upon the environment- friendly non-governmental agencies which will collect the garbage and dispose it appropriately.
Of the four-star hotels, the Elite and Baisan properties have invested in energy-saving keys that help automatically switch off electricity in rooms when locked, water-saving valves that offer pressurised flow but control the quantity of water used.
“All our properties – the Baisan, Best Western, Elite and the Hawar Resort are fitted with such devices,” said the Director of Operations at the Baisan Group, Himanshu Gandhi.
“Since we have about 325 rooms in all, that means a considerable saving of energy and utilities.”
Most hotels routinely offer optional turn-down services of beds and replacement of towels, says the Deputy General Manager, Caravan Group of Hotels, Mohan Pillai.
“Many short-stay guests choose not to have bedclothes changed everyday and if we leave three towels, they are instructed to put the used ones in the linen basket. These small practices save hotels hundreds of gallons of water in washing up over the long term,” he said.
“We also have sorting bins and tips for aluminium beverage cans, glass and cardboard which are handled by outsourced agencies and the proceeds go to charity. All our 230 rooms in the group’s hotels are fitted with water-saving valves and control-flush toilets to save water. In the summer, we reduce the use of our electric boilers since demand for hot water goes down and this too saves electricity.”
Ornithologist Howard King, in an earlier interview with Tribune remarked that not a single Bahrain hotel specialises in eco-sensitive tourism and even the so-called “green” initiatives are restricted to water-recycling and waste segregation with an occasional beach clean- up thrown in. On a day-to-day basis, there is no sensitising of workers to the impact of their actions on the environment, he maintained.
“Take the example of boat captains who ferry tourists to Hawar Islands – they often throw trash such as soft drinks cans, cigarette butts and plastic bags overboard.
“When passengers see this, they too repeat these actions and one person’s careless attitude – in this case the insensitive boat captain – is multiplied with disastrous consequences to the environment. Something as small as a cigarette butt can kill a turtle, for example.
The filter tip swells and sea creatures like turtles and dugongs mistake them for small fish and swallow them and choke. That is why hotels using environmental resources like the sea and coastal areas should sensitise staff to the use of the surroundings with the intent of preserving them,” he said.
According to Dr Saeed Abdullah, founder of the Kingdom’s first eco-tourism development office, Al-Reem Environmental Consultation and Eco-tourism, a pioneer in environmental consultation and promoting eco-tourism, Bahrain should continuously create alternative areas for different marine and terrestrial species to compensate for the number of new tourism projects that are being floated.
He said the proliferation of hotels and marina resorts are to be expected as Bahrain expands its facilities to meet growing demand for hotel rooms and more sophisticated services. This will naturally lead to the destruction of some coastal areas in the case of marina resorts and of flora and fauna in land-based hotels.
“We have to work out a pattern of development where we create alternative environments where the displaced flora and fauna can thrive whether on land or in the sea,” Dr Saeed said. “This involves efforts such as the building of artificial coral reefs to replace ones destroyed by land reclamation and the creation of ‘green spaces’ in urban areas for birds and foliage.”
Dr Saeed said that Bahrain, despite its climatic conditions which classify it a desert area, is rich in local flora and fauna, especially birds.
The Kingdom is a breeding ground for the world’s largest colony of Socotra Cormorants and for colonies of breeding Ospreys off Hawar; the rare Grey Hypocolius which breeds mainly in Iran and Iraq but can be seen in Manama; flamingoes and a wide variety of coastal birds.
“We have had some success in attracting bird-watchers from the UK, the US and Europe, especially Germany, to come on bird-watching holidays here. Locally, there are dolphin-spotting boat trips offered by the Bahrain Yacht Club that are very popular. However, eco-tourism is a very new concept in the Middle East. Bahrain was one of the pioneers of this kind of tourism and now places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia have adopted similar ideas.
“Authorities in Bahrain have been very receptive to the idea although eco-tourism by its very nature is somewhat exclusive. The groups cannot have more than 20 people, for example, and we must always maintain proper distance from the birds or animals we are watching. And the tours too must be staggered so that the reserve is not overwhelmed by tourist traffic. But by encouraging this kind of tourism to develop alongside regular tourism, I hope we can balance the two to the benefit of the Kingdom,” he said.
“Our emphasis in the Kingdom has so far been on a lively night-life and a cosmopolitan and urban approach and all hotel and tourism industry staff are trained to promote this point of view,” said King. “This must change and the training and promotion focus of the industry should be on highlighting the delicate desert ecology of Bahrain.
“However, the challenge is great and the returns will be necessarily slower than in the conventional approach. The plus point is that the nation’s environment will gain enormously and thrive for future generations to enjoy,” he said. | 
