HotelsMag November-December 2021 | Page 43

WE THINK THERE ’ S A LEGITIMATE DEMAND AND WE ARE RESPONDING TO THIS DEMAND FROM A VERY UNIQUE POSITION WHERE WE BELIEVE THAT THIS IS ACCRETIVE TO RETURNS . YOU CAN DO GOOD WHILE LOOKING OUT FOR YOUR INVESTORS AND ENSURING RETURNS , AND WE WANT TO EMBRACE THAT TYPE OF APPROACH AS WE THINK IT IS SUSTAINABLE OVER THE LONG TERM . to our positioning of this brand is a giveback component , where 1 % of all the revenue is generated under the umbrella of the Conscious Certified Hotels and will be given back to the host communities . We are focused on the social component with our assets being our superpower within ESG . And we define those in
for the conscious traveler . This is going to be meaningful because we plan to measure the impact that we ’ re making in the communities … For every dollar that we give back and 1 % of top line revenues for every single hotel is going to mean multiple millions of dollars over 10 years . We want to measure
– RAOUL THOMAS Pool at the Gabriel Miami downtown priority causes and track community impact through concrete data . It will also donate 1 % of all room night revenue to local organizations . Each property will select their respective non-profits based on hyperlocal needs , and each will conduct a robust measuring effort to ensure impact .
In August , HOTELS spoke to Thomas to further discuss his plans for the fund and what has inspired him to create Conscious Certified Hotels .
HOTELS : Tell us more about CCH ? RAOUL THOMAS : The central theme three pillars , the SHE pillars ( social consciousness , health consciousness and environmental consciousness ), which is essentially the genesis behind the brand identity .
H : Can independents that CGI doesn ’ t own join CCH ? RT : We hope one day our brand power demonstrates enough premium to ADR , RevPAR and occupancy that independents see the benefit of joining and using our toolkit . We believe we are pioneers in this regard – penetrating the market with a need that ’ s there the impact that this will make monetarily in the communities where these hotels are hosted . We ’ re using a proprietary tracker and an arm ’ s length , independent auditor will review these numbers . So , published data will come out , independent of our ourselves , that will track this impact .
H : Tell us more about acquisition plans . RT : We ’ ve already deployed capital and acquired three assets to give us about a quarter billion dollars of assets under management . We envision being close to seven assets
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