Capella's focus on sustainability as it preps Yang Yang resort

Tourism has bounced back as Covid-19 became endemic and more Koreans are leaving the country to finally trek across the globe for new experiences. One notable trend that has changed before and after the pandemic for Korean travelers, who used ...

The arial view of one of the luxury tents at Capella Ubud. The resort was built without cutting down any trees in the rain forest. It is designed by American landscape architect Bill Bensley. [HEAVENS PORTFOLIO]

Tourism has bounced back as Covid-19 became endemic and more Koreans are leaving the country to finally trek across the globe for new experiences. One notable trend that has changed before and after the pandemic for Korean travelers, who used to squeeze in as many cities as possible in their itinerary, is that they are realizing the true charm of staying in one location while enjoying the high-end services and hospitality provided by luxury hotels and resorts.

Global luxury resort brand Capella Hotels & Resorts, recently named the Best Hotel Brand in the world by U.S. lifestyle and travel publication Travel + Leisure, was quick to notice this trend. Capella Hotel Group has been developing its first luxury resort in Korea at Yangyang’s Songjeon Beach in Gangwon and hopes it will become the group’s ninth hotel and resort. But for Capella, luxury traveling is not merely sleeping in a bed with the finest linen or having a Michelin-starred fine dining experience at the hotel. In all its hotels and resorts across Asia, as well as its newest property in Sydney, Australia, the group has been making efforts to raise awareness that “true luxury traveling is being responsible and thinking about leaving behind an environmentally conscious travel footprint.”

Capella says Korean travelers, in that sense, are viewed as one of the biggest potential markets for many of their properties, particularly in Bali in Indonesia, Hanoi in Vietnam, and Sydney in Australia as well as The Maldives, which is operated under Capella’s sister brand Patina.

“Many of our Capella guests are beginning to understand the true meaning and significance of travel,” Jade Woon, vice president of sales at Capella Hotel Group, said. “Hence, choosing a brand like Capella makes a lot of sense because of the way we curate experiences, how we bring culture and art into our guests’ daily habits.”

Woon added that her company began to notice that “more and more Korean travelers are recognizing and favoring what we call the ‘higher purpose of traveling.’”

“They don’t want to just visit the most beautiful location but also be responsible when traveling,” she said.

“We are seeing growing interest in wanting to be a part of sustainability. That is why we are so delighted to come to Korea and also open a way for guests to be a part of these stories we are creating through different hotels around the world.”

From left: Hannah Loughlin, director of sales and marketing from Capella Hanoi, Jade Woon, vice president of sales at Capella Hotel Group, Shue Sng, director of sales from Patina Maldives and Ganny Akbar, assistant director of sales at Capella Ubud, pose for a photograph at Capella Yang Yang Owner’s Club in Gangnam, southern Seoul. [YIM SEUNG-HYE]

Alongside Woon, the Hanoi, Ubud in Bali, and Maldives facilities’ sales and marketing directors recently visited Korea to introduce the Capella brand and “reiterate how important the Korean market is for Capella as we are preparing our first resort in Korea in YangYang,” Woo said.

The construction of Capella Yang Yang, which has been delayed due to financing issues, will finally begin in the second half of this year.

Woon says all Capella hotels are built with the same core value in mind: Sustainability.

“That is why it takes us many years, for example, seven for Capella Sydney, to construct a hotel and finally welcome our guests. For other luxury five-star hotels, it is not that difficult to build a hotel and open it within seven days,” Woon said.

Capella Ubud Bali [HEAVENS PORTFOLIO]

Capella Ubud in Bali is located in the middle of a rainforest and it also took Capella seven years to build the property. This makes sense as Capella Ubud decided not to cut down any of the forest’s trees to construct the luxury resort while bringing in everything needed to build a hotel to the location manually.

“We were able to save 677 trees from being cut down by designing the resort in such a way,” Ganny Akbar, assistant director of sales at Capella Ubud, said.

American landscape architect Bill Bensley, who recently caught Koreans’ attention by designing the new JW Marriott Jeju Resort & Spa, designed Capella Ubud as well as Capella Hanoi.

“All the things you see in the hotel were also carried in by hand so no heavy machinery destroy the forest. That is why the rooms, or luxury tents as we call them, look like they sprouted up from the ground. It blends with nature and is built around nature so they can coexist.”

Akbar also added that the resort only uses “organic products for all our amenities so shampoo and body wash do not destroy the soil. For leftover soap, we send it to be upcycled, and donate it to the local community.”

Patina Maldives, which opened in May 2021, looks similar to most of the other resorts in the archipelago. But the resort differentiates itself from the others by rescuing trees from neighboring countries so that they can be replanted.

“We rescued 16,800 trees and 320,000 shrubs that were removed for land expansion or construction in neighboring countries. We brought them into the island to surround our villas and provide privacy for our guests,” said Shue Sng, director of sales from Patina Maldives. “All the villas were also pre-fabricated before coming into the island to minimize carbon emission.”

Another sustainability effort the resort makes is educating the kids who visit the resort on the importance of protecting the environment.

One of the villas at Patina Maldives. [HEAVENS PORTFOLIO]

“Every Monday, our team in Patina Maldives goes out to the ocean to pick up all the plastic around the neighboring islands. The guests can join if they want to of course,” Sng said. “We collect about 10 kilograms of marine plastic per week, we clean it and teach the kids how to upcycle at the Kids Club, where we have 3D printers and laser cutters.”

Patina Maldives is also known for its organic garden that provides all the vegetables for its plant-based restaurant Roots, as well as all the other restaurants including the staff cafeteria.

For Hanoi, the building process took five years.

Hannah Loughlin, director of sales and marketing from Capella Hanoi, said the group has a list of “green goals” that all Capella hotels and resorts must follow.

“It’s one of our most important KPIs,” she said. “It includes minimizing our energy consumption, power usage, water waste, trash and more. Because we are a new build, Capella Hanoi could literally comply with all those requirements.”

Loughlin says it was not easy to have zero plastic within the hotel property, which is difficult to achieve in a country like Vietnam. The group even built a bottling plant, which cost about $35,000, so that the hotel could bottle all its water.

“Sustainability is still a new conversation in Vietnam. They are trying but it’s not that meaningful,” she said, adding that it is why Capella Hanoi has this commitment to set an example. “There’s no cutting corners when it comes to protecting the environment for Capella. We could have found cheaper ways of heating, lighting or air conditioning, but we didn’t. It’s non-negotiable for Capella,” she said.

As for Sydney, which is a city hotel, sustainability goes a step further than the environment.

“For Capella Sydney, sustainability also expands into the conservation of the city’s culture and heritage,” Woon said. “We did not construct a new hotel, we opened a hotel as part of a conservation project to save a heritage building in Australia.”

Capella Sydney opened in March this year by conservating the former Ministry of Education building. [HEAVENS PORTFOLIO]

Capella Sydney currently uses the property that used to be the former Ministry of Education, built between the 1920s to 1935. The entire building has a beautiful façade, but the inside was completely nonfunctional.

“So we decided to save the façade but renovate the inside to turn this heritage into a luxury hotel that also educates all our visitors about the city’s culture and its heritage,” Woon said. “We even kept the Ministry of Education sign on the façade. We worked closely with the Australian government to really think about how to ensure that whatever could be conserved was conserved.”

Jung Eun-kyung, PR executive manager at Ayumm Hotels & Resorts which manages Capella Yang Yang, said the resort will also be working very hard to stick to the Capella standard and its core values regarding sustainability.

“It’s going to be the first luxury beach resort in the area and we want to set a good example, even from the beginning stage of construction,” Jun said. “We hope to revitalize the area and ensure Yangyang becomes a must-visit travel destination for global travelers.”

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [yim.seunghye@joongang.co.kr]