United by optimism

1 Jul

Victoria Tolman - Director at Red Carnation Hotels

2020 saw the hospitality industry come to a standstill. With 18 unique and special hotels around the world now closed, and 2 new properties in the pipeline, the team behind Red Carnation Hotels were faced with some unprecedented challenges. As a business we chose to pivot, with passion and purpose and realise the opportunity!

Opportunity makes it possible to do great things. Optimism is ignited when real opportunities for growth become clear to us. Purposeful optimism is built on substance, derived from strategy and underpinned by a well-resourced team. It frees us up to consider new options and change our business, and lives, for the better. It helps us look to the future and create expansive, evolving realities. An optimistic attitude provides motivation, fortitude, and resilience. Optimism keeps the light of opportunity glowing even when the world seems dark….

When the industry was quiet, we found our voice

In 2020 Red carnation Hotels celebrated 100 years of hospitality which began when my grandfather, Soloman Tollman, opened a small hotel in Paternoster (a small fishing village in the Cape in South Africa) in August 1920. One-hundred years later, with a global pandemic, closed hotels and furloughed teams, we decided to share our story with our guests, partners and teams around the world with monthly storytelling videos from The Tollman Family, interviews with partners and ambassadors and updates from our hotel teams. This truly brought us closer to our global family and opened the hearts and minds of our treasured guests and valued teams during a time of such disconnection around the world.

We opened Xigera Safari Lodge

Xigera is our love letter to the magic of the African bush. Xigera Safari Lodge is the fourth, and latest, African property to join The Red Carnation Hotel Collection. It was nothing short of a dream come true for my family to become custodians of Xigera and nothing short of a miracle to be able to finish the lodge welcome guests from December 2020. Xigera Safari Lodge offers an exceptional land and water safari experience of anything anytime, with just 12 beautiful suites, each resting effortlessly in this wild landscape. Amid this remarkable setting, Xigera’s design aesthetic is wholeheartedly dedicated to celebrating African art, design and creativity. From bespoke handcrafted pieces and inspired works of art, to an unforgettable sleep-out experience beneath Africa’s star-spangled skies.

We continued to invest in sales and marketing

Despite the financial challenges of the past year, the Red Carnation team saw a unique opportunity to elevate our brand and invest in our assets. With a new property Xigera Safari Lodge ready to open, the team worked tirelessly to redesign and rebuild each and every hotel website across the collection, we also invested in a new PR agency to ensure our properties remained visible, despite our doors being closed. Red Carnation Hotels is part of the TTC family of travel brands, and along with our 40 sister companies we united as one global sales team. Our General Managers sent regular, personal video updates to each of their guests and industry partners, our sales teams presented our beautiful properties to thousands of industry partners around the world, we collaborated and communicated with each other more than ever before to reach new clients and stay connected with our most trusted partners too.

We created a healthier environment for our guests and our teams

As a hospitality business, we take our role very seriously and we have always employed stringent safety and sanitation protocols. In response to the pandemic, we also implemented Leitha CleanCoat™ into our UK hotels, this is the first solution of its kind and offers long-term protection by purifying the air and rendering treated surfaces self-disinfecting. As we continue to face the global challenge of responding to Covid-19, we remain focused on caring for the health, security and wellbeing of our guests and employees, and continue to operate our hotels with both our head and our heart during these difficult times.

We are committed to make travel matter

As a family-owned and run business we genuinely care about our people and our local communities. We work hard to protect the wildlife and environments within which we operate and are passionate about sustainability. We are proud to work alongside The TreadRight Foundation and The TTC family of brands to MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® through conservation, leadership and support for communities.

In 2020 we launched 11 Sustainability goals developed to address Red Carnation Hotel's impact on Planet, People, and Wildlife. These goals include achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 or sooner, source 50% of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025, reduce food waste by 50% by 2025 and eliminate as many unnecessary single use plastics by 2022.

We remain optimistic for a successful 2021 and on behalf of The Red Carnation Hotel collection we wish our industry colleagues the very best for business recovery and personal health and happiness!

Victoria