Tashi Tsering, chief executive officer (CEO) of Songtsam Group, shares Songtsam hotel group’s experience on practicing sustainability and social responsibility in the travel and hospitality industry.
Below is the edited transcript:
Hello, everyone! I am Tashi Tsering, CEO of Songtsam Group. I have travelled through Yunnan-Tibet highway and reached Shangri-La. It is a pity that due to COVID-19 we could not communicate physically but we had to meet virtually.
After 21 years of development, Songtsam Group has so far developed twelve hotels, all of which are located in Yunan and Tibet provinces. From the historical point of view, this neighbourhood is well-known for the ancient tea house road. For nature lovers, this road leads to the world’s highest mountain – Mount Everest. It starts from the Hengduan Mountains in the east, meeting the three parallel rivers in Yunnan, to the holy city of Lhasa and the Himalayas in the west which is acknowledged as a world-class scenic route. In this fantastic area, Songtsam has set up its chain of luxury boutique hotels.
Songtsam luxury boutique hotels have all been sited with elaborate considerations. One of our hotels situated in the Laigu glacier (Laigu Village) in Tibet at an altitude of 4200 meters, has been operating under arduous conditions due to low oxygen levels, shortage of resources and extreme climatic conditions. Even during the summer season in May and June, this place is covered with snow and the roads are blocked. Our hotel uses spring water from the mountains. For about four months a year, the aqueduct to the hotel freezes. Hotel staff with the help of the villagers chisel the ice by hands to ensure a smooth supply of water for the hotel operation.
Many hotel operators and businesses will not run their business in such a place. They may think that we are doing an irrational thing. However, we at Songtsam don’t regard ourselves as purely a hotel group. We believe that we are more than just a hotel. We select such areas to build our hotels because we wish to offer natural beauty and traditional culture and beauty that meets modern living standards to our guests in the most comfortable way. They will be embraced not only with the enchanting scenery but also indelible experience. More importantly, they will have the opportunity to interact with the lands, villages, and locals, and even connect spiritually. It is of great significance for Songtsam to run hotel in such rough terrains. With our group’s vision ‘rooted in the countryside, connected with the land’, we hope to further enhance our development in this land.
So far, Songtsam has around 800 employees, of which 95% are locals from villages where the hotels are located, instead of town or county. Among the 800 employees, over 50% of them have not completed their junior school education. Before Songtsam builds the hotel in their villages, they are unemployed and mostly homemakers who have caregiving responsibilities at home. With the job offered by Songtsam hotel, these locals can now support their families without having to migrate, take this opportunity to meet with international guests, share their local culture and lifestyle, engage in deeper conversations about life and spirituality. This is a very significant feature of life at Songtsam hotels.
Baima Duoji, the founder of Songtsam group said, “the core value and vision of the group is pursuing the source of peace and happiness”. We should not only build hotels in such untouched territories and take locals pursue the source of happiness, but also pass on the essence of the local culture and share the culture and local experiences with global guests, especially from the metropolitans. In the travelling industry, Songtsam has created a unique business model that stands out from other peers. Some define it as a hotel-based tour model; some call it a hotel-based tour combined with an experience of local culture, local staff and enchanting scenery. Whatever one calls it, Songtsam has explored its unique way that is also recognised by the Development Research Center of the State Council as an innovative travelling business model.
In the meantime, located in such places, while Songtasam is developing its own business model, it is heading on the path from targeted poverty alleviation to rural revitalisation. It accumulates its rich experience in the industrial, cultural, biological and talent revitalisation, and endeavours to contribute more towards local villages. Each hotel building of Songtsam represents the local architecture with the local traditional culture. After prudently learning about the local architecture and culture, we have embedded the best cultural factors into the buildings and this will further result in the development of the entire village. We expect that every village where our hotel is located will be positively influenced by the architecture and pass on the local culture heritage to descendants.
Since 2020, Songtsam has built partnership with Dalin Village at Namcha Barwa, Tibet. Dalin Village in Milin County, Nyingchi Prefecture, Tibet is the last village located in the valleys of the Namcha Barwa Grand Canyon. We built a hotel behind Dalin Village surrounded by the Namcha Barwa mountain. In order to promote the development of the Dalin village, we signed an agreement with the local government that for each room we rent, we would transfer $30 to locals. As the Chinese saying goes, “the unique features of a local environment always give special characteristics to its inhabitants”, we also hope that through our operation and promotion, we can offer positive feedback to the locals who protect the environment. Since the launch of Namcha Barwa hotel on 17th March 2021 till now, Songtsam has transferred over $157,000 to Dalin Village. People in the village even those from the nearby villages are excited to hear this news. The heads of the nearby villages bring their villagers to visit Lodge Namcha Barwa. In the next five years, we plan to run hotels in Lhasa, Sannan, Shigatse and Nyingchi in Tibet, Puer and Dêqên in Yunnan and other places following the similar cooperation model between Songtsam and Dalin Village. This is the unique business model of Songtsam.
An increasing number of college students have returned to the village after their graduation. Due to Songtsam group, they receive the opportunity to work, develop, inherit the local culture and share their culture with people for different countries. This is what we call revitalisation of talents.
When Songtsam starts a new project, we give special attention to the relationship between architecture and local culture. Baima, the founder of Songtsam said “for every hotel building, we need to think about what it will look like after one or two hundred years”. We hope that after two hundred years, when neither the current generation nor Songtsam exists, the buildings must stand strong for descendants. When they see these buildings, they should feel warm, homely and joyful. They may possibly think about how to convert it into kindergartens, nursing homes or public libraries. We do not wish to hear the locals say it is such ugly architecture, let’s crack it down. It is a relationship that we endeavour to develop with the locals.
Culturally, Songtsam hotels have well adapted themselves to the local culture. While, from ecological and nature point of view, it has also inherited concepts of “six longevities” of the Tibetan culture. We trust the philosophy embodied in rock longevity, fountain longevity, aged longevity, deer longevity and red-crowned crane longevity. Humankind will live a longer life too only when all the co-existing creatures in the ecological world live longer. This is what we think about the most advanced natural ecological concept.
At the same time, Songtsam is also actively responding to the concept of global sustainable development and the country's call for dual carbon goals. We have established partnerships with Siemens, Schneider and other international brands. We have also upgraded all machinery and backstage operation systems to meet the new renewable energy and carbon emission requirements. In the near future, we hope that our hotels will be zero carbon hotels. We also hope that we can motivate the villages where our hotels are located to adopt a cleaner and more environment-friendly way of living and the villages can extensively pass on the dual carbon concept to other areas.
This is the story of Songtsam. I sincerely look forward to welcoming every guest present at this conference to Songtsam hotel in the near future.