Here at MajorDomo, we are proud to call Aotearoa our home, and we take true delight in sharing this beautiful paradise with visitors from around the country and around the globe.
As hosts, we believe that we play a role in promoting awareness of travelling with a conscious footprint, and we also actively strive as a business to remain aware and improve our own personal footprint while doing things to support our community.
Our Environmental and Social Commitments
We are a proud Tourism Industry Aotearoa member and as such, we guide our environmental and social policies on the New Zealand Tourism Sustainability Commitment.
The New Zealand Tourism Sustainability Commitment consists of a set of 12 Commitments for New Zealand tourism businesses to work towards.
The 12 Commitments for New Zealand are:
Economic
1. Resilience – Focus on long-term business performance and resilience.
2. Investment – Invest to create value, opportunities and to drive sustainability practices.
3. Innovation – Innovate to solve problems, create new ways to do things and increase productivity.
Visitor
4. Visitor Satisfaction – Strive to always meet or exceed visitor expectations.
5. Culture and Heritage – Embrace Aotearoa New Zealand’s culture and heritage as part of delivering a unique and authentic visitor experience.
6. Visitor Engagement – Engage with visitors about how to be great travellers within Aotearoa New Zealand.
Community
7. Employer of Choice – Attract, support and develop the workforce needed to flourish and succeed.
8. Community Engagement – Actively and positively engage with the communities in which we operate, taking a leadership role to champion causes that are important to the community.
9. Sustainable Supply Chains – Have socially and environmentally sustainable supply chains.
Environment
10. Restoring Nature – Contribute to protecting and enhancing Aotearoa New Zealand’s environment, including water, biodiversity, landscapes and clean air.
11. Carbon Reduction – Act urgently to contribute to Aotearoa New Zealand’s transition to a net zero carbon economy.
12. Eliminating Waste – Take responsibility for the entire life cycle of products and services we use and ultimately eliminate the waste associated with these.
While some of our work around how we build resilience, what we invest in, how we innovate and drive a high performing team is commercially sensitive, we are proud to share how we take care of our visitors, community and environment.
Economic
| 1. | Resilience – Focus on long-term business performance and resilience. |
| 2. | Investment – Invest to create value, opportunities and to drive sustainability practices. |
| 3. | Innovation – Innovate to solve problems, create new ways to do things and increase productivity. |
Visitor
| 4. | Visitor Satisfaction – Strive to always meet or exceed visitor expectations. What we do: ✓ Measure visitor satisfaction. ✓ Actively ask for reviews from our visitors and develop a process to ensure all feedback is monitored and responded to. ✓ Act appropriately on feedback from your visitors. What we’re working on: ✓ Developing a Net Promoter Score program. |
| 5. | Culture and Heritage – Embrace Aotearoa New Zealand’s culture and heritage as part of delivering a unique and authentic visitor experience. What we’re doing: ✓ Working with a local iwi member and kaumatua to learn about the culture and heritage of Queenstown. ✓ Working with your Maori community to continue to collect and tell stories. ✓ Incorporating stories of our place into our visitor experience in a way that makes sense – in our pre and post-stay communications and the offering of a Maori greeting or storytelling session on arrival. ✓ Embracing Te Ao Māori (the Māori world), including the use of Te Reo Māori (Māori language) in our communications. ✓ Deliver the values of Kaitiakitanga (guardianship), Manaakitanga (hospitality) and Whanaungatanga (relationships and shared experiences) throughout our guest engagement and experience. |
| 6. | Visitor Engagement – Engage with visitors about how to be great travellers within Aotearoa New Zealand. What we’re doing: ✓ Integrating the Tiaki Promise into our business and guest communications to educate our guests about how to travel responsibly in New Zealand. ✓ Engaging with our visitors to understand their cultural backgrounds and needs. |
Community
| 7. | Employer of Choice – Attract, support and develop the workforce needed to flourish and succeed. What we do: ✓ Pay more than the living wage to all staff. ✓ Have staff induction and training processes in place for new staff. ✓ Provide an organisational chart for our business and a clear job description for every staff member. ✓ Be an inclusive employer. ✓ Nurture our young tourism talent and showcase the tourism industry’s attractiveness to our team members. ✓ Undertake regular performance reviews of all your staff. ✓ Have systems in place to capture feedback and satisfaction levels from staff. ✓Talk about MajorDomo’s culture in our communications. ✓ Offer professional development opportunities to staff and have a training and development plan for everyone in our team. What we’re working on: ✓ Becoming a recognised Employer of Choice. |
| 8. | Community Engagement – Actively and positively engage with the communities in which we operate, taking a leadership role to champion causes that are important to the community. What we do: ✓ Allow for donations and volunteer time in our annual budget. ✓ Support local and national groups and individuals that are either close to our hearts or doing better. We volunteer at KiwiHarvest and Basket of Blessings, supported Regan Runs in 2023 (a local family fundraising to support Bowel Cancer New Zealand), and regularly donate to The Stroke Foundation of New Zealand Limited, Ronald McDonald House, Clarke Foundation and Westpac Rescue Helicopter. ✓ Talk about the great things you are doing to support the community. ✓ Promote local causes that need funding or volunteers. ✓ Introduced an internship/work experience programme into our operating model. What we’re working on: ✓ Providing sponsorship information and guidelines on your website to make it easy to deal with sponsorship and donation requests, and to show which causes you support. ✓ Work with other likeminded businesses to identify and work on on areas of most need in the community. |
| 9. | Sustainable Supply Chains – Have socially and environmentally sustainable supply chains. What we do: ✓ Understand our supply chain so we know the products we use to deliver our services are socially and environmentally friendly. ✓ Have a sustainable purchasing policy including the sourcing of goods locally, where possible. ✓ Have a plan to ensure our suppliers minimise waste and packaging. What we’re working on: ✓ Talking about our aim to achieve a sustainable supply chain, including telling stories about the great work our suppliers are doing. |
Environment
| 10. | Restoring Nature – Contribute to protecting and enhancing Aotearoa New Zealand’s environment, including water, biodiversity, landscapes and clean air. What we do: ✓ Support Trees That Count and the Whakatipu Reforestation Trust. ✓ Donate to Forest and Bird. ✓ Follow Queenstown Lakes District Wise Water Tips to reduce water use and water pollution. Have a plan in place to ensure you are doing nothing to pollute the waterways around you. ✓Include environmental information in your visitor experience. ✓ Integrate the Tiaki Promise into our business and guest communications to educate our guests about how to travel responsibly in New Zealand. What we’re working on: ✓ Incorporating, enhancing and protecting nature as part of our business plan and have reporting measures for the actions you take. ✓ Sharing the stories of the great things we are doing and the environmental difference you are making. ✓ Writing submissions on local environmental or social concerns. |
| 11. | Carbon Reduction – Act urgently to contribute to Aotearoa New Zealand’s transition to a net zero carbon economy. What we’re doing: ✓ Measuring the data we need for one year to calculate our footprint. ✓ Setting carbon reduction targets and creating a plan to achieve these. ✓ Developing an energy plan. ✓ Planning to understand our carbon output and become carbon friendly by Q2 of 2024. |
| 12. | Eliminating Waste – Take responsibility for the entire life cycle of products and services we use and ultimately eliminate the waste associated with these. What we do: ✓ Measure our solid waste and continue to determine what we can eliminate or reduce. ✓ Working with local contractors to monitor and control the water we use to avoid waste. ✓ Identify all harmful waste that our business generates and minimise harm to the environment by replacing/reducing/eliminating toxic substances. ✓ Compost our organic waste. ✓ Where appropriate and possible we have switched from single-use plastic consumables to larger refillable consumables in the villas to reduce the amount of single-use plastic. ✓ Linen is only be washed and changed during stays of 7 or more nights to reduce energy consumption. ✓ Provide recycling and compost facilities to all guests, with information on best recycling practices specific to the area. ✓ Between each guest stay, properties are carefully closed down to ensure there is no unnecessary energy consumption when not in use. Where possible we encourage our villa owners to use smart home systems to ensure energy usage is carefully monitored. ✓We are proactively working with our villa owners to encourage them to switch to more energy efficient solutions, for example changing out the garden hose for irrigation systems and installing water efficient shower heads. ✓ We have reduced the use of paper files in our workplace and have moved to paper-free procedures to decrease our consumption of resources. ✓ Integrate the Tiaki Promise into our business and guest communications to educate our guests about how to travel responsibly in New Zealand. What we ask our guests to do: ✓ Be mindful of energy consumption – turn off lights and heat pumps when not home. ✓ We recommend using gas fireplaces for ambience only and suggest choosing a more energy-efficient heat source to control the temperature of the home during their stay. ✓ During their stay, to choose local stores and locally crafted goods to not only reduce the carbon footprint of production but also support the local community – guests can find a selection of some of our favourite local suppliers in our Villa Compendium for inspiration. ✓ Help our recycling efforts by sorting and recycling any rubbish and compost during stays into the recycling bins provided. ✓ Provide filter coffee and a plunger coffee to avoid the single-use capsules. ✓ Integrate the Tiaki Promise into their adventures. |
Have you heard of Mahu Whenua?
MajorDomo is also very proud to manage the luxury lodge on the property at Mahu Whenua, the profits from which are reinvested back into the extensive private conservation project which takes place on the land there.
Originally purchased as four separate high country stations, covering an area totaling 136,000 acres between Lake Wanaka and Arrowtown, Mahu Whenua is one of New Zealand’s largest private conservation efforts. After years of intensive farming, the owner has worked to reinstate the land back to its native state, with the introduction of over 1.4 million native plants. The property is also a key location for ongoing research studying the effects of extensive farming and the recovery of the land, providing an unprecedented learning opportunity that will guide sustainable land-use practices of the future.
In an act of true philanthropy, and to ensure that the conservation efforts can be enjoyed by future generations, the owner has also partnered with the QEII trust and has placed protective covenants on 90% of the land, meaning they are now protected from and future development which would counteract the conservation work that has taken place.
Mahu Whenua plays a very special part in the MajorDomo story, and we are proud to be part of such a magical project.
