How Ritz-Carlton Hotels Are Making a Positive Impact Around the World
The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands
In October 2023, as the races at the Mexico City Grand Prix electrified track-side spectators, a quieter but no less meaningful moment unfolded at the city's Gota de Leche School. Associates of The Ritz-Carlton, Mexico City and members of the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team came together to create a bright, cheery, and well-stocked arts and crafts room for its students, with a view to improving the quality of arts programming as well as creating capacity for creative enrichment. As another gift to the students, the volunteers also packed school bags filled with new art supplies, including a handwritten letter from each of them.
This was all made possible by The Ritz-Carlton Community Footprints program, a charitable project that began over 40 years ago as an internal give-back initiative—and now extends across all 120 Ritz-Carlton properties around the world. “With our size and our scale, we have a responsibility and a very unique opportunity to be a force for good in our local communities,” says Jenni Benzaquen, Senior Vice President and Global Brand Leader for The Ritz-Carlton. “Now, guests who come to our hotels are more and more interested in being a part of what we’re doing.”
“It makes our guests feel good, knowing that they’re contributing to a bigger cause,” says Tina Edmundson, the president of luxury brands at Marriott International. This aligns with the increasingly widespread re-definition of ‘luxury travel’ as an opportunity to develop cultural and environmental understanding. In the last few years, travelers have come to more deeply appreciate not only the importance of spending time with loved ones, but also giving back to their local communities and protecting the environment. To be able to do that while traveling, Edmundson says, is the greatest privilege.
Through The Ritz-Carlton Community Footprints program, what giving back looks like in practice varies from place to place. “There’s never a one-size-fits-all solution,” says Edmundson. “The needs of one community are very different from another’s.” At The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands, for example, volunteers assist with the removal of ghost nets—fishing nets that have been lost or abandoned at sea—to preserve the marine life in the Indian Ocean. Environmental protection is also the name of the game in Florida: At The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, a naturalist on property guides volunteers in the planting of sea oats to safeguard the barrier island from shore erosion; Edmundson says that repeat guests enjoy returning to the property over time and seeing the impact of what they have planted.
Of course, the good work is not exclusive to resort properties. At The Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi, Grand Canal, guests are invited to visit an on-site vertical farm that creates the 22 pounds of fresh produce used at the hotel’s culinary venues every single day, and learn about the importance of agricultural sustainability. Some iterations of Community Footprints are more behind-the-scenes, but no less important: A training and education program at The Ritz-Carlton, Toronto helps adult refugees in the city hone their talents and improve their chances of working directly in the industry. Across the Ritz-Carlton properties, options to get involved with Community Footprints meet the guests where they are—whether they’d like to fish out ghost nets, plant sea oats, or check into The Ritz-Carlton, Berlin and order a specific cocktail whose proceeds go to a local charity.
Community Footprints has always been and will always be a volunteer opportunity, Benzaquen says, but moving forward, she hopes it will be less of a missed opportunity. More and more guests are participating in the program, says Edmundson, offering feedback and spreading the word among fellow travelers. Now, the Ritz-Carlton brand is working to increase visibility of the program and make it more accessible to anyone who wants to get involved. Marriott as a whole is evaluating how to better focus on one or two social causes to ensure the company is leveraging their size and scale in a way that makes a broader global positive impact.
All things considered, it can be difficult to quantify the impact of these efforts, no matter how worthy, Edmundson says. But that’s the thing about doing good and paying it forward: "We can’t immediately see what we’ve prevented or what harm we’ve curbed. The most visible results of our actions will likely come after our lifetime,” she says, “so we’re bringing these programs to the forefront more actively than we have ever had in the past.”
Whether it’s through volunteering during a stay at a Ritz-Carlton hotel, or independently going on give-back trips, responsible tourism is about seeing and protecting the world. And now more than ever, travelers have plenty of opportunities to learn more about the places they’re visiting in addition to leaving it better than they found it. As Benzaquen says, “At the end of the day, we all just want to do more good.”
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
