Want to make money in tourism?

Go local, engage community, test eco solutions!

First: a quick overview of our resort

(LooLa Adventure Resort)

Here is where we are:

A view from the top

Our brand new luxury Eco villa 1:

Sabine’s villa featuring a roof with 50,000 bamboo

shingles!

The world’s first 2 villas where the sun powers the aircons – by freezing a block of ice during the day!

Eco villa 2: Isa’s villadesigned by a local NUS student; constructed

with local materials; built by local people

Cozy and adventurous dormitory space for the

children/students

4 dorms @ 75 beds each

Open wall canteen / conference hall right by the

beach!

The most varied & challenging activities in the region; accessible

to all

Our activities just outside LooLa

A cultural gem:Visit the Orang Laut (Sea Gypsies), a unique tribe that has only recently settled down in the small islands south of Bintan, 1 hour by Loola’s boat

and then there is CSR/VIA at its very best, in great

variety

CSR with 3 target groups: orphanages, schools, and local village communities

Tree planting projects

Meet the animals at Loola

Post-Aceh UNESCO-endorsed waste water processing, rainwater collection, & solar-power for daytime electricity !

4 last years: TripAdvisor world top 1% family hotel !

2013: world top 3 for Community Tourism

Some of our awards

Our proudest moment: World # 1 responsible tourism operator!

The Straits Times picked up on our sustainability awards:

Why the award for World’s best Eco resort?(point being: this stuff brings money in!)

The modern definition of responsible tourism recognizes 4 components

• The business brings benefits to the local community: materials sourced locally, LooLa’s staff is 100% local and receive significant PD, as well as the right to run their own (shop) business on & off site. The company furthermore spends close to 100 K per year on CSR/VIA in cooperation with its guests

• Resource efficiency: by deciding not to offer air-con or hot showers (except in our 2 luxury eco villas), by collecting rainwater, and by running the whole resort and the new eco villas on sun power, we achieve a very low ecological footprint

• Respect for natural environment: we have planted over 10 hectare of mangroves and trees and have a chemical-free insect control program

• Transparent, inspirational and copyable solutions : all our solutions are open-source, we share successes and failures freely, others can copy what we do, and we hope they will!

How is Eco great for your bottom-line? Let’s go through the same criteria again:

The business brings benefits to the local community: • using local staff is cheap & ensures site-loyalty and pride in work. • Letting staff run their own business makes them stakeholders rather

than employees, and saves you painful accounting. • CSR should not be charity: your guests are happy to pay for it, so make

it part of your business model!

Resource efficiency: solar power pays itself back, rainwater collection systems and wastewater gardens are very economical, and so are chemical-free aniti-insect systems. As long as you are honest about your systems, guests love what you do, never complain if things don’t work, and come back with friends!

• Respect for natural environment: again, build it in your programs (pretty easy to do) and guests will love you for it (= more business).

• Transparent, inspirational and copyable solutions : sharing successes and failures freely buys you a great deal of goodwill, as well as wonderful partnerships with like-minded partners.

But what about these pesky local communities? Let’s go through the common complaints:

Local communities can be ungrateful and have unrealistic expectations • sure they can be a pain in the neck … but not more so than any other

community! • The answer is open discussions whereby everybody puts on the table

what they would like, and you encourage and coach everyone to contribute solutions that benefit all.

• This isn’t just necessary with developing communities, the Dutch have been doing this for centuries and consider it key to success.

Local communities lack the education to run a tourism businessWe beg to differ: our staff has an average education of about Primary 4, but that didn’t stop them achieving world class! Let’s face it: local people know how to cook and how to clean and how to maintain things and how to offer great service. All you need to do is train them!

• Local communities won’t get stuff done without supervision Again, we beg to differ. Empowering people and placing trust – under peer review! – in people buys you loyalty and local ownership. The difficulties are the same as with a first-country team, but they cost less!

You’re welcome to check for yourself – come and see us in

LooLa!