We’re committed to giving back, both to local areas and to charities such as the Marie Keating Foundation, Leukaemia Care, and Air Ambulance Northern Ireland. We work with employment support organisations in local communities.
2023 will mark the eighth year of #DalataDigsDeep. In total, over the last seven years we have fundraised over €1.36 million for our charity partners, with a total giving of over €1.77 million when you include matching corporate donations. Three new charity partners were selected in 2022 based on the health and wellbeing theme, as chosen by our colleagues. The Marie Keating Foundation is our Republic of Ireland partner, Leukaemia Care is our partner in Great Britain and Air Ambulance NI in Northern Ireland. Together we are partnering to save lives.
The teams in all of our hotels and Central Office organise their own charity fundraising events throughout the year, but particularly in September, which is Dalata Digs Deep Month where we have an increased focus on fundraising.
Our people generate all sorts of unique fundraising ideas, and our teams have a great culture of getting involved, having lots of fun and raising money for our charity partners. Previous fundraising events include sky dives, bungee jumping, abseiling, car washes, pieing your manager or dunking them in the swimming pool, spinathons, talent shows, fashion shows, auctions, sweepstakes, football tournaments, bake sales and the list goes on. It is a fantastic way to have fun with colleagues, engage customers and guests, while having a positive social impact.
We also have a number of Group wide charity events such as the Great Dalata Cycle and the Great Dalata Run series plus many more events coming down the tracks.
Marie Keating Foundation
The Marie Keating Foundation is a leading voice for Cancer prevention, awareness, and support. We are partnering to facilitate over 100,000 conversations between Marie Keatings nursing staff and members of the public on spotting the early signs of Cancer. Our impact to date has allowed the foundation to commission two new mobile unit vehicles which visit communities nationwide providing lifesaving information to the public. To discover all the latest activities please visit www.dalatadigsdeep.ie
Leukaemia Care UK
Meanwhile colleagues in Scotland, England and Wales are dedicated to raising funds for Leukaemia Care, a charity dedicated to ensuring that everyone affected receives the best possible diagnosis, advice, information along with treatment and support. We are partnering to support patients, and their families, who need to receive a new life saving treatment called Car-T. Our impact to date has seen many families avail of the new Away From Home Fund to cover costs of travel and food while also availing of accommodation in our UK Hotels located close to the hospital administering treatment.
Air Ambulance Northern Ireland
Air Ambulance Northern Ireland provides an emergency helicopter medical service for the whole of Northern Ireland. We are partnering to support their lifesaving work in providing immediate care to people with serious injuries across Northern Ireland.
Each of our hotels and Central Office support their local community to create a positive social impact and promote economic opportunity for all in their local area. This is done in a variety of ways such as supporting local people who have barriers to employment, sponsoring local sports clubs and community organisations, responding to crisis such as the unprecedented number of Ukrainian migrants seeking refuge in Ireland, volunteering for litter clean-ups in the community and providing free or low-cost meeting spaces to community partners. Dalata’s culture is to support local in whatever way we can.
We prioritise suppliers who have embedded sustainable and ethical practices within their organisation and drive these practices within their supply chain. We are committed to purchasing based on life cycle costs, not just the purchase price, and to supporting locally sourced ingredients.
All main supply contracts are awarded following a thorough and complete tender process in which sustainable procurement is a key requirement. Dalata’s procurement team put sustainability goals at the heart of all supplier contracting. Our central purchasing function works continuously on market trends and new supplier collaboration opportunities.
Strong supplier relationships support our goal of delivering excellent customer service and experiences. Maintaining an open dialogue with our suppliers helps to make sure that they are responding to our needs and that we are providing value for them. Our centralised order-invoice matching and payment platform offers suppliers the certainty of efficient and consistent payment. We try to support smaller local suppliers by committing to their products and offering them an opportunity to reach a wider audience through our main wholesale partners.
How We Work With Suppliers On Sustainability
In November 2021, we hosted an online supplier sustainability conference, presenting our supplier code of conduct and set a 2024 target to collect scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions data from 100% of our tier 1 suppliers. Our second Dalata Supplier Sustainability Webinar was attended by more than 50 suppliers and covered topics around environmental, social, governance and sustainability. We presented Dalata’s goals in these areas and shared learnings through supplier presentations on their own sustainability projects.
During the year, we also carried out a Supplier Sustainability Questionnaire. This was undertaken as part of a wider data-collection project to see where our suppliers are on their respective sustainability journeys. It is important for us to develop key priority focus areas around the ‘shared value’ between Dalata’s priorities in this area and our suppliers.
In 2022, our Irish hotels launched the Dalata Irish Breakfast, which was a commitment to supporting Irish breakfast meat suppliers in all Dalata hotels across the country. These suppliers are all Bord Bia Approved Origin Green suppliers.
We work with employment support organisations in local communities. These partnerships allow Dalata to have a positive social impact by supporting people in our local communities who experience barriers to employment such as people with disabilities and disadvantaged youth. While we are, in some cases, providing employment and work experience, we are also learning how we can be more inclusive in our recruitment and workplace practices. In 2021, we demonstrated our commitment to marginalised groups as signatories of the Valuable 500 pledge. In 2022, there were 49 partnerships between our hotels and local employment support organisations. From those partnerships, 36 people were given employment.
Making It Work In The Real World
Maldron Hotel Parnell Square partnered with WALK, an organisation that supports people with intellectual disabilities. The hotel provided a number of work placements, working closely with the participant’s key workers and adapting to the needs of the participants. The hotel has employed two people through this partnership and has gained valuable knowledge of inclusive practices for people with disabilities.
Clayton Hotel Manchester Airport partnered with Pure Innovations which helps people with disabilities and disadvantaged groups to gain employment and access community and leisure activities. The hotel provided work experience to a service user who went on become a part-time employee and has become a strong team member in their food and beverage department.
Where circular economy principles are concerned, we are really only at the start of our journey and we are aiming to initiate a pilot project on this theme before the end of 2023.