Six Senses triumphs in global awards

DUBAI – One of Asia’s leading resort and spa development companies, Six Senses, has won a 2008 Tourism for Tomorrow Award.

The awards, in association with Travelport, recognise and
promote best practices in sustainable tourism development.

Winners were announced at WTTC’s 8th Global Travel&Tourism Summit.

Six Senses won the Global Tourism Business Award.

Six Senses Resorts& operates luxury properties primarily in the Maldives, Oman, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Other winners were:

Destination Award – Blackstone Valley, USA
Conservation Award – Ecotourism Australia
Investor in People Award – RARE / La Ruta Moskitia, Honduras

About the winners:

Six Senses Resorts and Spas

Six Senses’ sustainability programme – known as Social and Environment Conscience – is comprehensive and systematic, including protection of the environment and supporting the well-being of communities.

Their focus is on four key areas: Holistic Environmental Management Programme, Social and Environmental Responsibility Fund, Environmental Awareness and Capacity Development, and Corporate Partnership Programme.

Blackstone Valley, USA

Local community members launched the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council (BVTC) in 1985. Their goal was to revitalise the nine communities along the Blackstone River Valley in Rhode Island that formed the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution and then ultimately became a victim of it when the Blackstone became the first polluted river in the Western Hemisphere and its industrial economy collapsed.

Working with a wide range of multi-stakeholders, BVTC has shown that tourism can play a key role in helping to revitalize a downtrodden economy and bring back a river once declared “dead” to the benefit of local people, business, and nature

Ecotourism Australia

Ecotourism Australia was formed in 1991 as a not-for-profit organisation whose primary membership is private sector tourism businesses.

For nearly two decades, it has helped to build a broad-based conservation through tourism approach throughout Australia.

With educational outreach, workshops, conferences and public-private partnerships, Ecotourism Australia has helped to make conservation an important part of Australia’s national tourism development efforts, resulting in Travel&Tourism businesses building nature conservation planning and outcomes into their business models.

RARE / La Ruta Moskitia, Honduras

Within one of the largest remaining tracts of rainforest in Central America, home to expansive wetlands and indigenous groups, lies a remote region of Honduras known as “La Moskitia”, or the Mosquito Coast.

Modern-day travellers now visit this unique region as guests of La Ruta Moskitia – an alliance of five indigenous communities and RARE, an international conservation organisation who worked with local villagers to launch this community-based tourism project to address poverty alleviation and biodiversity conservation in the Rio Plátano Biosphere Reserve – a two million acre UNESCO World Heritage Site that is located in the heart of La Moskitia.

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