How Ritz-Carlton Hotels Are Making a Positive Impact Around the World

22.05.2024 - 22:27 / cntraveler.com / Amelia Island / Jenni Benzaquen

In October 2023, as the races at the Mexico City Grand Prix electrified track-side spectators, a quieter but no less meaningful moment unfolded at the city's Gota de Leche School. Associates of The Ritz-Carlton, Mexico City and members of the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team came together to create a bright, cheery, and well-stocked arts and crafts room for its students, with a view to improving the quality of arts programming as well as creating capacity for creative enrichment. As another gift to the students, the volunteers also packed school bags filled with new art supplies, including a handwritten letter from each of them.

This was all made possible by The Ritz-Carlton Community Footprints program, a charitable project that began over 40 years ago in 2003 as an internal give-back initiative—and now extends across all 120 Ritz-Carlton properties around the world. “With our size and our scale, we have a responsibility and a very unique opportunity to be a force for good in our local communities,” says Jenni Benzaquen, SVP EMEA Brand Portfolio & Managing Director Design Hotels Marriott International. “Now, guests who come to our hotels are more and more interested in being a part of what we’re doing.”

The Ritz-Carlton Community Footprints program created an arts and crafts room for for the students of Gota de Leche School in Mexico City.

“It makes our guests feel good, knowing that they’re contributing to a bigger cause,” says Tina Edmundson, the president of luxury brands at Marriott International. This aligns with the increasingly widespread re-definition of ‘luxury travel’ as an opportunity to develop cultural and environmental understanding. In the last few years, travelers have come to more deeply appreciate not only the importance of spending time with loved ones, but also giving back to their local communities and protecting the environment. To be able to do that while traveling, Edmundson says, is the greatest privilege.

Through The Ritz-Carlton Community Footprints program, what giving back looks like in practice varies from place to place. “There’s never a one-size-fits-all solution,” says Edmundson. “The needs of one community are very different from another’s.” At The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands, for example, volunteers assist with the removal of ghost nets—fishing nets that have been lost or abandoned at sea—to preserve the marine life in the Indian Ocean. Environmental protection is also the name of the game in Florida: At The Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, a naturalist on property guides volunteers in the planting of sea oats to safeguard the barrier island from shore erosion; Edmundson says that repeat guests enjoy returning to the property over time and seeing the impact of what