Alaya Tulum Hotel in Mexico shows a strong commitment to the surrounding communities by creating employment opportunities and by promoting sustainable development among the local region.
Alaya Tulum participated in the Green Key Best Practice Competition 2017 organized earlier this year with the theme “partnership and local engagement for sustainable development”. In January 2017, the hotel established a partnership with a family business of one of the employees at the hotel. The business is a 3 hectare organic farm called ‘Lemons’ 150 km from Tulum and it provides produce exclusively for Alaya Tulum Hotel. Through its operation, the farm provides work for a family of 4 people.
The sustainable production entails a better way of using existing resources at the farm, it promotes recycling of nutrients and helps improve the soil. Organic production is based on the integration of practices of tilling the field, which includes a great amount of labour. This generates employment in the same area or region and prevents leakage of foreign exchange in the procurement of external inputs.
There are several benefits of organic farming, which include:
- No use of chemicals, pesticides or fertilizers
- The produce has a flavor, color and aroma of the highest quality
- The produce contains more vitamins, minerals and antioxidants
The locally produced products also help in preventing global warming, as the transportation lengths are minimized and by purchasing produce from the farm, Alaya Tulum supports the local economy.
Through their established partnership, the farm delivers produce to the hotel 3 times a week. The produce and amounts (per month) include:
- 2000 pieces of coconut
- 200 parts of pineapple
- 160 kg lemons
- 640 kg oranges
- 20 kg dragon fruit
- 12 kg habanero chili
The goal of Alaya Tulum is to maintain the relationship with the family business and to start working with new suppliers in order to increase the variety of products and the number of deliveries to the hotel. The hotel also want to offer more new and healthy dishes on their menu. In addition to their existing partnership, the hotel also encourages the use of organic, fair trade- labelled, ecolabelled and locally produced products when purchasing.
