Hotel & Tourism SMARTreport #39

ASIA / PACIFIC INBOUND
TRENDING HOTELS
JUST HOW
“GREEN” CAN
A HOTEL BE?
Anthony Wong is Group Managing Director, Asian Overland
Services Tours & Travel, AOS Conventions & Events, Frangipani
Hotels & Resorts, Frangipani Natural Farms, Eco Green Design
& Construction and Construction Wetland. In 2005, he set
the goal of making Frangipani the “greenest hotel in the
world”. We asked him what constitutes a “green” hotel.
Most green hotels have 20 or 30
criteria, but here there are over
200 documented ways! We have
our own chickens, ducks, fish
and vegetables. This year we are
embarking on showing the locals
how to do hydroponic farming
using recycled elements. Many
people think it’s very expensive to
build a green hotel, and I say, “No,
it may cost you 5-10% more, but
you will obtain savings of 15-30%.
We treat our raw sewage to
drinking standard using water
plants and microbes on nonconstructible
land. We have nine
Anthony
Wong
Group Managing Director,
Asian Overland Services
Tours & Travel,
AOS Conventions & Events,
Frangipani Hotels & Resorts,
Frangipani Natural Farms,
Eco Green Design
& Construction and
Construction Wetland
bee hives on site, with stingless
bees. We grow a lot of our own
food here. Last year we harvested
three tons of organic mango. We
even have our own mulberry trees
from which we make tea. In the
next three to five years, we will
be making bio-gas from waste
food and human waste, and the
liquid from this process will go to
my organic farm on the rooftop.
This property will be a best-case
example and a green hotel school
MIMPI OPENS
ON PERENTIAN
ISLANDS
The beautiful Perentian islands off the northeast
coast of Malaysia’s mainland are still
little-known to the travel world at large, but
that is changing quite rapidly as top-level
infrastructure is added.
Purporting to be one of the only hotels on the
two main islands with full-time electricity (a big
plus), the four-star Mimpi Perentian Long Beach
Resort opened its doors in time for the highseason
2018 with around 50 of its eventual
total of 75 rooms operational.
Resort Manager, Fazli Abd Rahman explains,
“The water supply here comes all the way from
the mainland, but electricity has to come from
local sources. Some years ago, the government
built wind and solar generators on the highest
point of the island, but they broke down shortly
afterwards, and there has been great debate
since then as to how to replace them”.
Perentian islands are a paradise for beachgoers,
nature lovers and divers. Day trips take
snorkelers to numerous points of interest,
including Shark Point, where black-tip reef
sharks may be observed, and other points
where one can get a close-up view of the local
sea turtles, which are protected and adored by
the locals.
Long Beach is lined with numerous bars,
hotels and restaurants, frequented largely by a
younger European crowd: a fun, and thankfully
still not overcrowded place to visit!
View from Mimpi Resort