Dusit Hotels and Resorts is the first hotel chain in Thailand to offer 100 per cent organic rice across its entire portfolio of properties nationwide, aligning with the company’s ‘Farm-to-Table’ concept.
While benefiting guests, customers, and employees, this also provides sustainable income gains and life-changing developments to agricultural communities in the kingdom’s Thung Kula Rong Hai area, specifically Surin and Sisaket provinces.
The initiative sees Dusit work directly with farm collectives and provide all the support they need – from quality control, training, packaging to distribution – to deliver well-packaged, high-quality organic Jasmine rice to its hotel, restaurant, and catering businesses.
Four farming communities were carefully selected to work with Dusit based on their passion for high-quality produce and eagerness to co-develop and enhance their agricultural offerings – these include farming collectives in Surin Province’s Cor Ko and Nhong Pai subdistricts, and Sisaket Province’s Huai Thap Than and Nong Khae subdistricts.
Siradej Donavanik, vice president – hotel business development, Dusit International, and chairman of Dusit’s sustainability committee, said that the organic rice initiative is part of the company’s strategy to optimise its culinary offerings: “Jasmine rice from Thung Kula Rong Hai is known around the world for its strong aroma, soft texture, and slender grain – the long-grain white rice we source is among the finest of its kind.
“As a business, our organic rice model helps to optimise quality and overall costs within the group, so it’s truly a win-win.”
Dusit is also working closely with the farms to help enhance their output so they can reach more customers and grow their business, ultimately driving sustainable development with long-term benefits for all farmers involved. Some examples are purchasing new rice mills to help speed up production and enhance their capacity to generate more sales, selling the rice on online channels, and using the rice in the culinary offerings of other business units.
Other subsidiaries under Dusit International that are using the organic Jasmine rice in Thailand include Le Cordon Bleu Dusit Culinary School, and Epicure Catering, the leading provider of quality food services to the educational sector in Thailand, which Dusit acquired in 2019. More business units are expected to follow next year.
She is currently the managing director of the Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program (STAMP) at Cornell University’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and the SC Johnson College of Business, a role she has held since 2017.
