Heritance Hotels win double gold at the Green Apple Awards

Aitken Spence Hotels bagged two awards at the recently held International Green Apple Awards for the Built Environment and Architectural Heritage 2011.

Heritance Hotels beat many organisations from around the world to walk away with the awards. The Gold Award for Architectural Heritage in the Private Sector International category went to Heritance Tea Factory. Heritance Kandalama won the Gold Award for Built Environment.

Speaking on the win Malin Hapugoda, Managing Director – Aitken Spence Hotels said: “The Green Apple awards are a global endorsement of both the environmental and the architectural commitment of Heritance Hotels. The Heritance brand is synonymous with unique architecture and living traditions. It is encouraging that our efforts have been recognised internationally once again. We are also proud and honoured that we were able to bring recognition to Sri Lanka by winning these awards.”

Heritance Hotels are renowned world over with distinctive and one of a kind architecture that is in sync with its natural surroundings. The brand places great importance on focusing on luxury that can be sustained, with minimum impact on the environment and communities in which they operate in.

As the name suggests, Heritance Tea Factory was once an abandoned tea factory that has now been restored and transformed into a luxury hotel. Heritance Kandalama is a resort that has a strong green focus and strives to continually improve on their environmental best practices, leading the market in green innovation. In keeping with the theme of sustainable luxury, all Heritance brand hotels place great emphasis on contributing to the improvement of both the natural environment and the communities they work in.

Launched in 1994 by The Green Organisation, the awards have, over the last 17 years, evolved into both a prestigious annual event and one of the major award schemes recognising and rewarding environmental endeavour around the world. The competition is open to organisations such as companies, communities and councils committed to improving sustainability and making a positive impact on the environment.

The awards were based on environmental performance, encouraging the efficient use of resources, enhancing the competitiveness of organisations, supporting wider goals of sustainable development including social benefits through community and staff involvement of the organisations.

The comprehensive and multi-faceted judging criteria looked at components of the entries such as environmental benefits, social benefits such as the value to the community, financial benefits such as cost saving and improving the bottom line. The awards also focus on visual and aesthetic impact, energy efficiency, waste reduction, recycling or using recycled materials.

Great emphasis is placed on architectural heritage, on how structures preserve the best of the past and design in character with existing buildings, how traditional crafts and skills and other specialist work are incorporated into the buildings, how environment disruption has been minimised, innovation and last but not least, transferability of the project of how others can benefit by adopting techniques used in the project.

The awards were presented at a ceremony held at the University of Westminster, London.

Heritance Tea Factory and Heritance Kandalama will also be provided the opportunity to have their award winning paper published in The Green Book, the world’s only annual work of reference on environmental best practice which is distributed globally to environmental professionals, reference libraries, universities, embassies and the media.

Furthermore, this year The Green Book will be distributed throughout Houses of Parliament in the UK, as an insert in The House magazine, further spreading the stories of the unique and environmentally friendly Heritance Hotels.

With Sri Lanka gaining more and more attention and recognition globally, this win will no doubt further strengthen Sri Lanka’s reputation as a destination of choice for the discerning traveller.