St Raphael Resort and Marina – Award-winning sustainable luxury

The 5-Star luxury St Raphael Resort and Marina is situated on one of the best and largest Blue Flag accredited beaches on the east side of the lively cosmopolitan city of Limassol, and provides for a small paradise on earth, with luxury amenities including a new residential tower with apartments for both short- and long-term rent, promising you a comfortable and relaxing stay away from home

What type of accommodations and facilities does St Raphael Resort and Marina provide for its visitors?
“All rooms of the hotel have been fully renovated before the pandemic, with the latest amenities and facilities.
We offer an array of facilities of rooms from standard sea view, luxury family, business, suites and apartments, something to suite everyone’s taste and needs. Accommodation Terms: Bed & Breakfast, Half Board and All Inclusive.
The hotel has 7 restaurants: Street Food, the Cyprus first hotel vegan restaurant, traditional local outdoor, Italian, seaside fine dining at the marina, and authentic Thai.
St Raphael is ideal for conferences and events with catering facilities; the purposely built halls and rooms can accommodate from 10 to 525 people.
Our award-winning Serenity Spa offers impeccable treatments and local products with pure nature being at the heart of our philosophy, and many innovative features such as an eco-gym.”

Building sustainability into the brand does not only help the environment, it also helps businesses that want to cultivate company longevity. Does your organisation have a sustainability programme in place that helps support your overall mission?
“Our mission is to offer sustainable luxury. We want to show that even large organisations can make a change to a sustainable model. It is not an easy process; however, we have a plan and strategy to get there. One of our initiatives is to start a sustainable committee, where we get feedback from key members of our team, so they also feel involved. We want everyone to embrace this as a new way of life, not just in the workplace, but also at home and in their everyday lives.”

What initiatives and events has your organisation undertaken to ensure its positive impact socially, environmentally, and economically?
“There are far too many initiatives to mention, however a few of them are to go as one-use-plastic-free as possible, switch to eco-friendly cleaning products, increase our energy efficiency through photovoltaics and water saving methods, offer education programmes to both staff and guests, encourage healthy ways of living to our team, increase our plant-based options on all our menus and reduce our carbon footprint, and so much more.”

What sustainability challenges does your organisation face?
“The biggest challenge is to change people’s habits and opinions, first and foremost from our own team members, and then to those of our customers. This cannot be done overnight but with patience, the opportunity to accessible information, training, honesty and transparency in numbers, we believe this can be achieved.”

What business value have you seen?
“I believe companies who are not interested in sustainability have an expiration date. The time of short-term profits is slowly decreasing. It should not be optional for businesses to remain unsustainable and pretend by making small efforts and ‘green-wash’ marketing techniques. As consumers we must demand a better way.”

Watch the full video on Cyprus Mail’s YouTube Channel: St Raphael Resort and Marina