info@cayugaonline.com
Cayuga walks the line, balancing sustainable and high-end in its properties
By Frances Figart
There has been much discussion regarding the marriage of “luxury” and “eco” in Costa Rican tourism. Can it be done?
Cayuga Sustainable Hospitality, which manages three responsible resorts in Costa Rica, has successfully combined what seems to be two opposing factors: eco and luxury. How do they do it?
“Our properties provide high quality services and installations, but the experience is not over the top,” says Hans Pfister, Cayuga’s president and co-owner. “The idea, rather, is to showcase ecotourism to high-end people who have influential positions and can make a difference.”
And the company is doing just that. The accommodations they manage have been chosen repeatedly as vacation spots by journalists, Nobel Prize winners and CEOs of large companies from around the world. Such influential people as John McCain, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon and CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour have visited only recently. The goal is to help educate such movers and shakers so they will be encouraged to take responsible choices back to their personal and professional lives.
Cayuga inherited the idea of focusing on the high-end market from John and Karen Lewis, two former peace corps volunteers who, in 1990, decided to abandon their suburban professional lives in the United States, liquidate all personal assets, and use the proceeds to finance the creation of a reserve with over 1,000 acres of mostly primary rainforest with enormous biodiversity in the Osa Peninsula. To support the maintenance of this private reserve and provide sustainable economic activity to the local community, they went on to build a small upscale wilderness lodging operation called Lapa Rios in 1993. In less than a decade, Lapa Rios became one of the most renowned ecotourism operations in the world. By 1999, the Lewises were so overwhelmed with the success of their creation that professional management had become a necessity -- and thus Cayuga Sustainable Hospitality was born.
“At Lapa Rios, we don’t have air conditioning, no telephones, no internet, no room service, long walks to the bungalows, but the experience in terms of nature and wildlife is incredible,” says Millay Kogan, Cayuga’s sustainability director. “But it goes beyond the eco and we have strong focus on the social part of things. Guests visit local schools, play soccer on the beach with our employees, and learn how to make tortillas with local women.”
Pfister and his team also manage Harmony Hotel on the Guiones beach in Nosara on the Nicoya Peninsula. Harmony has permaculture‐inspired landscape design, worm‐powered composting systems, solar panels to heat water, extensive recycling programs and waste management, chlorine‐free pool cleaning systems and organic, vegetarian food offerings. An active presence in the Nosara community, Harmony works with local schools to improve infrastructure and enhance environmental education and responsibility and helps the beach community keep its Blue Flag certification, an eco‐sensitive label that recognizes sustainable beach development through strict criteria for water quality, environmental education and safety.
A recent addition to Cayuga’s slate is Arenas del Mar in Manuel Antonio, which was actually built in accordance with Costa Rica’s prestigious Certificate for Sustainable Tourism (CST), which works to certify hotels based on their level of incorporating elements of sustainable tourism within the operation. It uses solar panels to heat water coupled with energy saving auxiliary heating systems and underground electricity systems that do not interfere with surrounding wildlife. In fact, the total construction of Arenas Del Mar covers less than 25 percent of the property itself; the rest will become a private nature reserve that will act as an ecological corridor to expand the area surrounding Manuel Antonio National Park. In the next few years, Arenas del Mar will be participating in an extensive reforestation program, planting over 7,000 native species of trees on the property.
When asked what advice he would give accommodations or management companies in keeping the sustainable standards high while still providing a high-end experience for guests, Pfister said, “Especially now in difficult economic times, it is crucial to work with the local community and spend a lot of time, money and effort on training and educating your staff. The more we continue to educate, train and develop our people, the better we do.”
