The company has spent two years working on an ambitious corporate volunteering project together with the NGO Manos Unidas and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID)
? Several members of the staff at NH Hoteles have been providing advice in building and managing a Hotel School in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Two NH employees went to the country to help open the school.
? The objectives of the project were to help contribute to sustainable tourism and give the population of one of the poorest areas on the planet the opportunity to receive professional training and improve their employment prospects.
“Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for the rest of his life.” This Chinese proverb perfectly captures the philosophy of the project, which has been in progress since 2010. NH Hoteles has been working together with the NGO Manos Unidas and AECID to start up and run a Hotel School in Ethiopia to help with the socio-economic development of the Tigray region through tourism.
This innovative corporate volunteering initiative, which is part of the NH Hoteles’ social action programme?Up! for Volunteering, aims to promote the values of solidarity and responsibility among its employees. The Hotel School has mobilised over 30 volunteers from within the Company, who have spent more than 1,000 hours offering their knowledge and expertise in the hospitality industry, advising on and coordinating the design, operation and management of the new establishment.
Over the last few years volunteers have participated remotely from many of the company’s departments, including Construction, Engineering and Environment, Purchasing, HR, Marketing, Reception, Quality, Restoration, Billing and General Management, among others. Two employees – Ada P?rez, Head of Reception at NH Les Corts in Barcelona, and Giovanni Arrigoni, chef at NH Fiera in Milan, moved to Tigray for a month to help with the preparations for the opening of the school and training local staff on site.
Thank you to every one of the volunteers from NH Hoteles who did their bit to make this charity project become a reality, when Agoro Lodge Hotel http://agorolodge.com opened its doors last January. It is an establishment where young Ethiopians can be trained in hospitality and to offer a service with Ethiopian standards of excellence. “The Hotel School project has been consolidated thanks to the trust placed in us by the NGO Manos Unidas and the volunteer work and commitment of our employees, which has fostered teamwork and motivation”, said Marta Mart?n, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at NH Hoteles, adding: “This is an innovative form of cooperation in the tourism sector, and an opportunity that will not only be replicated in similar initiatives by the Group, but may also serve as an example for other companies in the sector.”
[quote]Ada P?rez said that, “when I had to say goodbye after my stay in Ethiopia I couldn’t hold back the tears. Everyone there told us how lucky they felt to have received training from Giovanni and I, but I truly believe that we were the lucky ones. It was a unique experience. The hotel staff were very professional, and their enthusiasm and desire to succeed made us work even harder”, concluded the Head of Reception at NH Les Corts.[/quote]
Agoro Lodge, a collective dream made reality?
The Hotel School is located in the Tigray region, 5km from the city of Adigrat in northern Ethiopia. The hotel has 18 rooms built according to the local architectural style: traditional hand carved stones, roofs that blend rock and sand, wooden interiors and local craft work, as well as a restaurant with a varied menu and a local and international leisure space with a range of entertainment. Everything has been built using techniques that respect the environment and the hotel includes all the comforts expected from similar establishments on an international level. The construction of this hotel has created job opportunities for people in the region, the possibility of training in hospitality services and has promoted local economic development. It is a benchmark in sustainable tourism that benefits the local community.
NH Hoteles shows support for social action programmes
Social action programmes are another area NH Hoteles is involved in. Under the banner Up! for the People, the Company is working on three lines of action to build positive relations with the communities in which the company operates. It hopes to add value to local development via collaboration through the hotel business.
The first line of action for?Up! for the People?is?Up! for Opportunities, an international training and work experience program aimed at young people who are at risk of exclusion or disabled, which will be carried out across the company’s hotels. With?Up! for Hospitality, NH Hoteles is working to help society by offering its products and services to selected NGOs and charitable foundations, either through donations or through significant discounts.
Finally,?Up! for Volunteering?encompasses corporate volunteer practices that involve company employees promoting the values of solidarity and responsibility to the most disadvantaged members of society. In addition to the project of starting a Hotel School in Ethiopia, the Company carries out activities such as Navidad para todos (Christmas for everyone), an international food, clothing and toy collection campaign. It also has an agreement with the NGO Equipo Cooperante, whereby hotel employees from the Company in Salamanca gave distance learning classes to tourism students from the University of Villarica (Paraguay).
[box type=”tick”]About NH Hoteles
NH Hoteles www.nh-hotels.com ranks third in the European urban business hotel segment. It operates close to 400 hotels with almost 60,000 rooms in 26 countries across Europe, America and Africa. NH Hoteles currently has 20 new hotels under construction which will add more than 2,000 new rooms to its portfolio. NH Hoteles is traded on the Madrid stock exchange.[/box]