Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

Ron: When COVID came in, we had that opportunity to do that webinar series Built to Care, which gave everyone in the leadership team this repeated opportunity to think more deeply about what does care actually mean in various aspects of our lives. And then they took it into their own properties. The way we are with ourselves, with each other, with our team members and with our guests and with our families and with the local community and with the environment itself. 

Domink: Yeah, and a lot of times in the aspect of care, we in the beginning we said, okay, how can we show our guests that we care? But then all of a sudden everything was shut down and all of a sudden, there were no guests. We communicated with them and we showed care.  We called a lot of them which showed them that we cared. A lot of these guests were the first ones to come. 

But I think equally or maybe even more important, it was shifted inwards. All of a sudden we had to care about our colleagues, our team members,  that even though they were thousands of kilometers away, whether they in India or Bangladesh or Europe, wherever they were sitting, they still felt very closely connected to us because many here, in Mauritius, most of our team members are from the island in the Maldives, 50% are not. So many of them went home while the country was closed. But the fact that they got weekly calls, there were Facebook groups created for them. There was Zoom calls where everybody could log in. There were personal calls. That feeling of being cared for resulted in everybody coming back.

Obviously in the world we see people have gotten used to being at home, not working so much. All of a sudden they see, well, it’s actually quite nice to be with family not having the 24 hour operation. So we were worried that we would lose some people from the hospitality in general. But everybody. 

Ron: But not your team. Right? They knew that during an uncertain, unexpected era, you cared about what mattered and demonstrated that. They wanted to be part of that community again. They never saw themselves as leaving that community. 

Dominik: To another extent, some of the Maldivians we said, “Okay, go home, the hotel is closed.” A lot of them said, “Okay, we know the situation. We know obviously there were reductions being made in terms of compensations. I don’t care. I want to stay here because this place is important to me.” This hotel, this family, this community.And they stayed behind regardless.

Ron: I think it’s yeah, it goes both ways.