With a clear vision to becoming the industry leader, our ability to create value for our stakeholders is crucial for the sustainable growth of our company. We can only achieve this by earning the support and respect of our colleagues, our customers, our business owners and partners, our suppliers and our communities at large.
Engaging our Stakeholders
We must demonstrate this core organisational competence by bringing Corporate Responsibility (CR) into the heart of our operations and daily business activities. In the past two years we have focused our efforts on embedding the principles of CR into our strategic framework in order to make CR part of our operations and track our progress. We are at the beginning of a journey and our first CR Report allows us to establish our future commitments and will serve as a benchmark to demonstrate our progress. Through an open and honest dialogue we would like to invite our stakeholders to join us in this journey as we take CR to a higher level.
Sustainable Tourism
Travel and tourism is one of the world’s largest economic and employment sectors with consequently large impacts. Our current priority is to focus on the impact of our hotels and resorts, where we can have the greatest influence over creating positive outcomes. We are committed to investing in our local communities around the world and the tourism infrastructure. By creating unique employment and career opportunities, sourcing local products and services and helping build local supplier capacity, we aim to bring sustainable economic worth and empower our local communities.
We also remain committed to improving the lives of the communities in which we operate and getting involved in broader community investment activities through establishing the Jumeirah Foundation (subject to Dubai Government approval). This charitable foundation will support a range of community welfare and educational programmes, lead by our Colleagues of Exceptional Value. All guests staying at Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts will also have an opportunity to contribute to it.
We have also focussed on our carbon footprint and are looking at ways to measure the environmental impact of our operations. In this way we can specify an increasingly ecological approach to the building of new hotels and resorts whenever we talk to owners and investors.
Managing Change
Although this report, published in April 2009, covers our performance data until the end of 2008, we are mindful of the current global economic downturn and the impact this has had on our businesses in the first quarter of 2009. While our pipeline of future developments remains healthy, we are facing further delays in the dates for new hotel openings. A review of our overall organisation structure and cost-base has been initiated in February 2009. Our aim is to make the necessary changes to our existing business model and workforce levels to support the different degree of business we are experiencing now and anticipate in the future.
We care deeply about the welfare of our colleagues and we will ensure that job losses are managed professionally, with the utmost respect and integrity. We have made provisions to ensure mechanisms of support are in place, including career transition assistance to help affected colleagues move forward in their professions. Our Hallmarks, Guiding Principles and commitment to CR continue to underpin our company throughout this difficult period. While these are challenging times for all, I remain confident in the successful future that lies ahead for Jumeirah, as well as our ability to achieve the growth targets we have set out. We have a strategy in place and are working towards it. We have built up a great company, thanks to our colleagues and the support of our parent company Dubai Holding, and will continue to do so. In the 2009 CR Report, we will communicate our progress and actions taken.
I look forward to receiving your feedback on how we can further enhance our approach to Corporate Responsibility for the benefit of Jumeirah Group, and society at large.
Gerald Lawless
Executive Chairman, Jumeirah Group
Click here to download the full Jumeirah Corporate Responsibility Report 2008