01/11/2018 Fifteenth Day
The day can broadly be summarized as Fort Kochi day.
Instead of morning presentations at the hotel, the group took the bus to Fort Kochi to a colonial-modeled hotel owned by CGH Earth, a family-operated business interested in sustainability in the hospitality industry. Mindula Jose, notice the Iberian surname “Jose”, talked about the various hotels under the company and their sustainable operations. Her main point was that for-profit businesses do not mean that the environment and various communities are harmed. The higher aspirations of her family’s business model seeks to deliver a “heightened luxury”, or “the luxury of the conscience”. When formulas suggest that rooms should be charged at a rate of R300 per night, the hotel successfully charges R3,000 per night for the unique experiences of either undisturbed natural environments or interactions with local peoples and cultures. While I find no fault with the sustainable construction techniques utilized in CGH Earth buildings nor their tailoring to higher-end clients, I am dubious of the true social sustainability component when the majority of the population, the lower and middle income groups, cannot access to same sustainability opportunities in hospitality. The case in point is the rate of the rooms that are beyond simple affordability. Her rather lengthy and often repetitive presentation seems better suited for business clients seeking to invest in their enterprise. However, through her detailed discussion, I was also able to learn some Keralan cultural facts. First, the Mannan tribte from the Tikkady area uses elephant grass to hatch the roofs of the Spice Village hotel. Second, there are sarppakavu or sacred groves in the backwaters of Kerala used to worship snakes but also functions as a place to foster biodiversity and recharge ground water. Third, indigenous Vechur cows are making a come-back supported by the Coconut Lagoon hotel in the Kerala backwaters. Overall, it was still an encouraging talk on the role of sustainability in commercial endeavors.
