InterContinental Singapore - LED lighting and Peranakan design

Monday was a day of final meetings in Singapore for the team as three members (Peter, Connie and myself) were scheduled to fly out to Bali on Tuesday.  Our schedule was for Eva and Peter to visit the Regent Hotel in the morning, a 2:00PM team meeting with the High Commissioner of Canada, David Sevigny and Trade Commissioner Paula Murphy Ives, followed by a late afternoon meeting of Connie and myself at InterContinental Singapore.

InterContinental, Singapore

Last week we met with Holiday Inn Atrium another InterContinental Group (IHG) member hotel. Having a second meeting with another hotel in the same chain was really interesting though as IHG has incredibly progressive environmental and CSR requirements across the seven member brands.

Connie and my interview and tour of the InterContinental Singapore was with Mr. Jackson Wong, the Chief Engineer and CSR champion. Some of the environmental CSR highlights of our meeting and tour included:

1.     Viewing the 100% LED lit Man Fu Yuan Chinese Restaurant. The ambiance of the restaurant and lighting choice has immense esthetic and environmental appeal. The restaurant was actually featured in Lighting Today magazine for this project.

Those light fixtures are all lit with LED's

2.     Learning about the organic waste composter – a new project implemented about 2 to 3 months ago, the hotel processes all organic waste through the composter and then re-uses the fertilizer produced on the gardens

3.     Hearing about the hotel’s approach to bottled water – the hotel provides bottles only if requested, instead they offer jugs of ice water which most guests are happy with.

On a social CSR note – the InterContinental, Singapore has undertaken an amazing project in its renovation efforts of incorporating Peranakan architecture and design. The Peranakan people have ancestory of Chinese and Malay or Indonesian and have a rich culture with distinctive textiles and ceramics.  The design esthetic is phenomenal and brings a richness of experience to moving through the hotel space.

On a general note – our team has incredibly thankful for how friendly and helpful each of our interviewees has been in sharing their experience and perspective on environmental initiatives in the hotel industry. It has been inspiring to see the level of interest and engagement that each of our interviewees has.  As our active phase of data collection and conducting interviews has concluded and we start on report writing I can confidently state that our team has been blown away by the level of support we’ve received as well as the passion that our interviewees have for the projects they are undertaking. 

The Regent Hotel

Peter and I arrived at the Regent Hotel at the fringe of the Singapore downtown core. Upon entering the building, we marvelled at the high ceilings, large skylights and the beautifully designed elevators that looked like stylized capsules in the middle of the atrium. When we met Mr. Lee Baharrudin, Director of Engineering, he told us that the Regent was actually one of the first atrium designed hotels in Singapore.

Mr. Baharuddin was clearly passionate about sustainability and had a long history in the industry. He was able to tell us how the practices had changed within the hotel, and things that they were looking into in the future. As with other hotels we had visited, energy and water were large focuses at the Regent as well. Almost all the lighting within the hotel had been replaced with LED lighting, even including the exit signs in the hallways. Energy efficiency had also been improved recently with the installation of a heat recovery system that reclaimed heat from the chilling and boiling system. The entire development made use of NEWater, another trend we have noticed throughout the other hotels we had visited. In Singapore, there is a tax incentive for developments that use NEWater; NEWater is water has been recycled through reverse osmosis, preventing the need for Singapore to import water from Malaysia as had been done in the past. In the future, the Regent is looking into installing solar panels and a food composting system.
After our interview and on-site tour, Mr. Baharrudin was so kind to take us out for lunch at a food court nearby. He expressed his interest in helping and education students and mentioned that he had trained several engineering students in the past. He was really supportive of us, and offered his help in any way that we needed. For lunch we had Indian food, and as usual while eating, Peter was super happy! As was I. We left the our meeting with full stomachs and a new contact that we hope to stay in touch with once we return to Canada.

Connecting: a day of meetings.

Our day started early in the morning last Friday, at a meeting with our funders, Contact Singapore. At the meeting the group presented our findings so far, as well as talked about our progress and future plans for continuing the project. At our presentation, there were two representatives from the Contact Singapore Graduate Project supervisor team, as well as their in-house writer that took notes and asked questions so that we may be featured in their magazine. After our presentation, we got our photo taken by a professional photographer for Contact Singapore’s magazine!

Almost immediately, (after a quick coffee/lunch of course) we had another meeting, this time with former Executive Director of the Singapore Environment Council, Howard Shaw. We had been introduced to him, through Evelyn Wong, an extremely helpful and kind woman that moved from Canada to Singapore, and is involved in the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. I personally found our meeting with Howard Shaw to be one of the most interesting and enlightening experiences of our project. The amount of knowledge he had about Singapore the area of sustainability was astounding. Also, I found his perspectives to be very down to earth and practical. I also noticed my MBA mindset starting to creep in as he talked about some of the inefficiencies that existed within this area; one example being the recycling system. He mentioned that recycling bins had been installed in his office building, yet it was all dumped in to one truck and then resorted again at the plant! Our team discussed the potential business opportunity that may exist in this situation as we left the building…

Then we were off to a meeting with Mr. Thomas Thomas at Compact Singapore, a focal point in Asia for the UN Global Compact. It was very interesting to hear Mr. Thomas’ perspective on the role of CSR as compared to Howard Shaw. CSR in its true form according to Mr. Thomas was virtue, as opposed to something that could be used towards financial advantage. One interesting thing he talked about was implicit CSR, something that individuals within a corporation do out of their own good will to help others. The example he gave was a woman that worked for a company that bought chilli from local farmers. Often there would be excess harvest, that would drive prices down and result in a large amount being wasted. This woman decided that she would teach the farmers how to make chilli sauce so that they would be able to sustain their products for a longer time, and still able to sell them in the future.

After an already eventful morning and afternoon, we headed to High Commisioner of Canada’s house. We had met him at the earlier event with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and he invited us to an event at his house; a networking event surrounding the recent ‘Green Building Week’ in Singapore. Surrounded by Canadians again, as well as others from Singapore and other countries, we were able to meet many very interesting people from architects and green building auditors to exterior paint product salespeople and engineers. We even met someone from BCA, an organization that certifies green buildings under a set of criteria. He was very interested in our research as he had indicated the challenge in persuading hotels to become BCA certified. After an eventful day, with our minds full of things to think about, we headed back to get a good night’s sleep so that we would be refreshed and ready for the next day.

Expat's and Report Writing

It's been a few days since we've updated the blog. We've been busy doing follow ups with hotels, commencing background writing on the report (methodology, definitions, existing research summations), and doing some exploring of Singapore.

We have 19 survey respondents so far. Most of these respondents are those with a high interest in environmental issues and CSR so we've recognized that our results will lean towards environmental progressiveness rather than showing a true average of the industry in aggregate. All in all though the project is coming along well. It is a fair amount of work but our team morale is high and we firmly believe that our end result will be informative. We're also learning a lot in the process - we've all become stronger in cold-calling, composing compelling e-mails and letters, and in our interview skills as we begin to meet with industry associations and best-practice leaders.

On Friday we attended an event held by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce here in Singapore. We were invited by Marlene Han, the President (and the aunt of our MBA colleague and friend Chelsea). The event was at Urban Fairways and provided a perfect chance to meet and network with fellow Canadians including David Sevigny, the High Commissioner for Canada to Singapore while working on our swing. We had a great time, and it was wonderful to meet Marlene in person as she has provided advice and contacts as we've pursued this project.

The weekend was great - checked out the nightlife at Clarke Quay, met up with some of Eva's high school friends, ate some amazing Indian food and had snacks and a swim on Sunday with Eva's Father.

Team at Clarke Quay

Back to work now...

Today, we made our way through the forests of Sentosa Island to Siloso Beach Resort, one of our survey respondents and industry best practice leaders who agreed to host our onsite visit and interview. One of Siloso’s CSR Team members gave us a tour of their facilities at the hotel. This Eco-resort was designed from the planning phase to be built in harmony with the surrounding environment, and to minimize any harmful effects once in operation.

Perhaps the most striking thing to me about this resort was the efforts made towards keeping the surrounding environment undisturbed. For example, the terrain had not been flattened to build the resort. Instead, the hotel structure was built on stilts to account for the natural slope of the terrain. Siloso also went to great lengths to preserve trees that had originally existed in the area. When we visited one of the villas, a tree was right in the middle of the room, coming up through the floor and extending through the ceiling! As far as a hotel experience can go, it really felt like you were living amongst the natural habitat. A relaxing soak in one of the villas’ outdoors jacuzzis, listening to the jungle sounds would really complete that experience. There was also a beautiful swimming pool, which was built where an old road used to be, which meant that less digging was required to construct it.

It is clear that Siloso carefully and innovatively manages its energy, water, and waste. Some of the initiatives that we observed included a roof top garden that naturally cools the building through insulation, while saving water through a water collection system embedded below the layers of soil that evaporates back to the roots of the plants, thus reducing the need for irrigation. All the pool water was chlorine free, and was instead ionized to keep it clean, allowing the overflow water to be used for maintaining the gardens. The resort also had its own composting machines for food waste from the F&B department, as well as a system for sorting out recycling. They also build a lot of their own furniture with reclaimed wood pieces from nearby construction sites and deadwood found onsite that would otherwise be wasted. Overall I was highly impressed with the level of detail to which operations were designed with sustainability as the focus. From sustainable mosquito prevention to sourcing herbs from the rooftop garden for the F&B department, the variety of ideas that went into building a sustainable and effective operation was countless and inspiring.

Educating not only their staff but also their guests was evidently very important to their objective. The Eco-tour that had been given to us was actually an option that guests were able to partake in if they chose. Photos and signs with information about conserving the environment surrounded the café area where we ended our tour and were able to ask more questions. All these initiatives were in place with guest education and awareness in mind. More than the objective of reducing their own carbon footprint onsite at the resort, the staff at Silosa had much broader goals of extending their beliefs and practices beyond customers’ stays and into their daily lives. As we sipped our lemongrass drinks made from lemongrass that was sourced from the gardens at Siloso itself, the CSR team gave their thoughts on the industry, and explained their sustainability initiatives in greater detail. Overall, an amazing visit to an amazing resort! A big thanks to the CSR team at Siloso Beach Resort for enlightening us about such inspiring possibilities for hotels within the sustainability space!

Together at last!

Early this morning, the fourth and final member of the SFU team arrived in Singapore and made it just in time for our first scheduled meeting with Contact Singapore, an alliance of Singapore’s Economic Development Board and the official sponsor of our project. We arrived at their beautiful office building located in the Raffles City Tower, which had a 360 view of the city, and we were finally able to put faces to those we had been in regular correspondence with over the past couple of months - Patty Woo, Assistant Director and Lenny Azuree Ismail, Executive Officer at Contact Singapore. From being awarded the project in July, to our arrival in Singapore in September, both staff proved to be very friendly and helpful and served as an insightful resource for our project.


The purpose of this first meeting was for our team to meet and greet Patty and Lenny, and to collect our research stipend and airfare allowance - which we received in an envelope stuffed with Singaporean dollars! This meeting also provided us a chance to debrief Contact Singapore on our progress so far, discuss the main challenges that we currently face, and relay our action plan for the upcoming weeks in Singapore for completing the project. We were also excited to hear that they had scheduled a professional photo shoot for us for our next meeting (next Friday) and will be featuring us in their local magazine. Also taking place in our next meeting will be our formal presentation of the preliminary survey results, general trends and insights.

We also learned more about the types of research projects that have been awarded in the past and concurrently. We finally received some answers to the competitive nature of the winning teams, discovering that in Cycle 3, 24 teams from around the world had applied, and only 3 were chosen! The SFU team was one of these teams and being the first Canadian team selected for this initiative, Patty and Lenny expressed recognition of Canada becoming an increasingly important global partner in the business setting.

In terms of our progress for this project, we have currently received survey responses from 18 hotels in total, many of which represent key players in Singapore’s hotel industry. Initially, we were a bit disappointed in our seemingly low response rate. However, after speaking to the Singapore Hotel Association last week, we were reassured that getting responses from roughly 20 hotels in Singapore would be considered successful. This discussion motivated us to approach hotels even more aggressively and helped us re-adjust our focus to target the remaining hotels that are either large in size or are well-recognized for their environmental sustainability efforts. We are optimistic that we will be able to boost our response rate over the next couple of days and that we would be able to schedule at least a few more onsite visits and interviews with industry best practice leaders, in addition to the eco-tour that we have scheduled for at the Siloso Beach Resort tomorrow.

Food Pictures from Singapore

Shrimp at Japanese Burger place, MOS Burger
Teh Si at a traditional Singaporean breakfast cafe
Bread with kaya and butter at a traditional Singaporean breakfast place
Asian soft drinks at 7-eleven
Mee Goreng (fried noodles)
Various feast items! Fried rice, satay, kang kong, baby gai lan, sambal sting ray, cereal prawns, turnip cake omlette, sugar cane juice.

Lessons from Singapore

We're having a great time so far. We're starting our days by going to the gym followed by breakfast and then working until lunch. After lunch it's back to work until dinner and then some exploring and debriefing.

We've been really using our networking skills to try to increase the response rate to our survey and to learn more about environmental CSR in Singapore. As such we've established contact already in-person with the Singapore Hotel's Association, and are in e-mail contact with face-to-face meetings scheduled with Contact Singapore (our project supporter), the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Singapore Compact. All of our contacts have been invaluable thus far.

Some things I've learned so far in Singapore:

1. Use of Aunty/Uncle as a respectful term for persons who help you (ie. taxi drivers, hotel attendants etc) eg. Thank you Aunty

2. Cars have right of way as opposed to pedestrians when one is crossing the road

3. Durian (the fruit) is banned in many hotels due to the smell. There is actually a no durian sign in our hotel elevator

4. The MRT (subway system) is very civilized and may have some lessons for Vancouver. See the photo below for instructions as to where to stand while waiting for the train and what space to leave for passengers to exit. The full wall there is glass with doors that open when the train arrives.

Some photos:

MRT - guidelines as to where to wait versus disembarking

By the river - you can see the Marina Bay Sands in the background. 

Eva, Peter and Kathleen with Eva's high school friend Eugene

Day 3

After our first night at the new hotel, Hotel Bencoolen, the three of us worked out at the hotel gym. The gym was a covered but outdoor gym, and so we were all sweating PROFUSELY! Luckily there was a small pool next to the gym so we were able to cool down afterwards.

After an energizing exercise session, we headed to a meeting with the Singapore Hotel Association. The meeting was incredibly helpful; two representatives gave us advice on our survey questions, answered questions about sustainability in Singapore and in the hospitality industry, as well as gave advice on how to increase our response rate. Overall, it was a very successful meeting, and we headed back to our hotel to work on some follow up emails and calls.

Soon we will be going out for dinner with one of my high school friends for some authentic Singaporean food!