Close ties with local communities
TPS Serena Hotels is the tourism arm of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED) and is majority-owned by Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (AKFED), a longstanding partner of AFD Group. It has contributed to creating a range of high-quality hotel facilities, while basing its development on strong social responsibility. The Group is supported by PROPARCO, which has committed USD 64m to it since 2008, as well as a EUR 42,000 technical assistance project. The technical assistance project was to develop a formalized and standardized system allowing for systematic measurement of the local footprint and contribution to local development and economic activity generated by Serena Hotels in East Africa.
TPS Serena Hotels activity ranges from site selection, capital expenditure on new products and existing products, local procurement of food, beverage, utilities; wages; staff training; taxes; concession fees; park and conservancy fees. Through the value chain this results to various rounds of re-spending in the local economies by the guests, staff and local suppliers as each previous impact generates successive waves of revenues, salaries, taxes and jobs for the local economies. Ultimately this translates into the tourism expenditure multiplier and TPS Serena Hotels Gross Domestic Contribution (GDP) to the East African national economies is USD 291.4 million per annum.
“When TPS Serena Group was created, the objective wasn’t only to set up a profitable organization. We wanted to set some examples, whether it was the architecture of our properties, the location, training of our local human resources to ensure our projects have a huge impact on the development and economies of the countries where we operate within”, says Mahmud Jan Mohamed, Group Managing Director of TPS Serena Hotels. The Group directly employs over 4,000 East Africans and through its value chain creates over 18,000 indirect/induced jobs per annum.“We spend considerable time and resources to ensure that our employees are well-trained and that they can benefit from the experience and training programs in East African countries other than those from where they come from, indeed a ‘living’ reflection of East African unity”, adds Shenin Virji, Group Business Analysis Manager at TPS Serena Hotels.
Furthermore, TPS Serena Group’s procurement strategy thrives on local sourcing. All its hotels give priority to the communities living around their area of operation for the supply of fresh food products, the sale of arts and crafts and the organization of cultural guest activities.
Through the 21 Serena Clinics that are available to guests, staff and the local community, 21,805 community members are provided with free medical and wellness consultation each year. Approximately 23,000 community and 30,000 livestock benefit through the safe drinking water around the Serena properties.