Sustainability Officer appointed to reduce carbon footprint of Vietnamese hotel

The 580-room Alma Resort on Vietnam’s south central coast has appointed Vu Ngoc Linh as its first sustainability officer.

Vu Ngoc Linh, a hospitality professional with more than a decade’s experience in food and beverage departments, has stepped off the career ladder of the typical F&B professional to pursue an entirely new kind of fulfillment.

Linh’s job will be to track the property’s energy use, resource conservation, recycling, pollution reduction, waste elimination, transportation, education efforts and building design.

The role also involves creating sustainability programs, budgets and schedules, evaluating the success of sustainability initiatives, and managing three staff committees focused on ‘green products’, ‘innovation and solutions’ and ‘people and partnerships’. 

The stakes are high. The thirty-hectare resort requires 46,720 kWH of power and 900 metre3 of water per day.

Alma’s managing director Herbert Laubichler-Pichler notes “we’d like to think we can continue to make meaningful reductions in that consumption. Dedicating one person to this task is key to making that happen.”

One of Linh’s new projects, under the umbrella of the Innovation and Solutions Committee, is implementing what Alma believes is Vietnam’s most ambitious hotel solar power project yet. Alma will this year install 5,634 solar panels totalling 12,500 square metres. With a capacity of 2,480 kilowatts peak, the solar power system will fuel between a quarter to almost half of Alma’s energy needs depending on occupancy. 

In addition to the resort’s 325 square metre water treatment plant deploying a reverse osmosis system to provide 70,000 litres weekly of drinkable water and ice for all of the resort’s kitchens, Linh will also help determine other ways to offset the resort’s water usage.

Linh started his hospitality career in 2011 as a waiter at Six Senses Ninh Van Bay, before he became a restaurant supervisor at Dessole Beach Resort Nha Trang, a team leader at Vinpearl Land Amusement Park and an assistant outlet manager at Golden Peak Resort & Spa and Duyen Ha Resort. Linh then became a food and beverage manager at Xavia Hotel and Florida Nha Trang Hotel, and the assistant restaurant manager at Eastin Grand Hotel Nha Trang. 

Laubichler-Pichler said Linh’s background in F&B – a field notorious for waste generation – had motivated him to move into a sustainability role.

“Linh has a genuine drive to make a difference and he is well suited to a role at our resort dedicated purely to sustainability, encompassing the likes of garbage segregation, tree planting, paperless check-in, solar power, community initiatives to generate support for green projects, research and more,” said Laubichler-Pichler. 

To contact Alma or to make a booking visit alma-resort.com 

Image top: Vu Ngoc Linh has been named Alma Resort’s first sustainability officer; image above of the hirty-hectare beachfront resort Alma is implementing in what it believes is Vietnam’s most ambitious hotel solar power project yet