How I Became a Champion for Responsible Travel: Women Who Travel Podcast

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We've been thinking a lot about responsible travel here at Women Who Travel. You may have noticed: It's been a theme in a number of our recent episodes. And today, we're continuing that trend, sitting down Condé Nast Traveler advisory board member Harsha L’Acqua, whose nonprofit, Saira Hospitality, is built around helping new hotels make mindful, local-focused hiring choices. We first heard about her work when Liz Lambert mentioned Saira's pop-up and permanent hospitality training centers on a Women Who Travel episode back in 2019—and in this episode, we catch up with how Saira's been faring amid the pandemic, how its mission feels more important than ever, and how hotels can help travelers make better, more impactful choices while on vacation. 

Thanks to Harsha for joining us and thanks, as always, to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing this episode. As a reminder, you can listen to new episodes of Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, every Wednesday.

Read a full transcription below.

Meredith Carey: Hi everyone and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler. I'm Meredith Carey and with me as always is my cohost, Lale Arikoglu.

Lale Arikoglu: Hello.

MC: This week, we're joined by Harsha L’Acqua, the founder and CEO of Saira Hospitality, a nonprofit with pop-up and permanent training centers that connect locals with skills and employment at soon-to-open resorts. She's also a member of Condé Nast Traveler's advisory board this year. We first heard of Harsha's work back in 2019 when master hotelier Liz Lambert name dropped her in a live episode of Women Who Travel at South by Southwest. As we start traveling more, we're looking to make more responsible, locally minded choices when we travel, something Harsha has built her entire business around. We're so excited to catch up with you and talk all things responsible travel today.

Harsha L’Acqua: Likewise. I'm so excited to be on this. Thank you for having me.

LA: It's easy, at least for me to think of responsible traveling, quite sort of vague terms. What does responsible travel mean to you?

HL: Responsible travel, I think means to be mindful when you travel in a nutshell. I think it's about just being thoughtful. The word “responsible” for me brings up, conjures up, these images of school and rules and this is how one should be and this is how one should live their lives. I prefer it to think about traveling responsibly like traveling mindfully and to think about what you're doing, where you're going, how you're interacting, how you're getting there. Those are the things that to me would say someone's a responsible traveler as opposed to a tourist.

MC: You've spoken a lot of the influence your father's philanthropic work with Mother Theresa has had on you and the decisions you've made. How do you feel like your family and upbringing shaped the way that you travel and have thought about travel over the years?

HL: It's a huge influence. As a kid—I'm the youngest of five sisters and my two eldest grew up in Nigeria in Lagos and the three youngest, my twin sister and I and the middle sister, all grew up kind of between London and Bombay. And so we were exposed to immense and painful poverty since we were really little. And when my dad started working with Mother Teresa, I remember as the youngest of the five of us, not really knowing who she was other than she was this woman who was really quite petite and really quite humorous. And it was also a woman that my dad would have so much respect for. And I remember when she would call home in London at the dinner table and she'd be on the phone and he would get up and rush and he'd say, "Mother's in town and we have to see her." And we were kids and unfortunately didn't really understand who she was and didn't even know her quotes, but just saw the immense impact one quite petite woman could have on the world and just one woman.

And the five of us definitely have these very strong philanthropic genes where you can't quite go somewhere without being aware of what you have and what the locals around you don't. And I think that obviously has played a lot into what I do. My father was very old school and like many fathers I'm sure, and so he really believes in making money and then giving it away. He believes in the philosophy of caring capitalism. And while he is, I would say my biggest inspiration or one of my biggest inspirations for what I do, there's a lot of how he practices philanthropy that I don't believe in. And so I didn't grow up being able to have the luxury of thinking, okay, I'm going to make so much money by the time I'm 50 and then I'm going to give it away. And I don't think we have that luxury in today's world with terrorism and everything in the middle of the pandemic. I thought, well, I can't do it that way. I have to do it at the same time. I have to make money and at the same time impact people's lives because what if I don't get to live till 50—in a slightly morbid sense. I was looking for a way to connect philanthropy. And then I started working in luxury hospitality after university with Six Senses and a little bit with Aman and in operations in Singapore and I was really trying to connect these worlds that I loved, which was philanthropy and luxury hospitality. And I came across the connection when I was traveling in Cambodia and I was with a girlfriend, quite recklessly, kind of driving around Cambodia at night, not really thinking about what we were doing. And we came across a nonprofit called Sala Baï. And for me, it was really impactful to see how they were taking women who were otherwise in the sex trafficking trade and teaching them how to become housekeepers.

Long story short, that's been some of the impact that my family and my upbringing has had on what I do today.

LA: Yeah. The beginning of your answer, you touched on how in your childhood, you came up close to large swaths of inequality that takes place around the world. How did you kind of, when you started working in luxury hospitality, kind of wrestle with all of that while moving through these incredibly luxurious, opulent, moneyed spaces?

HL: It was difficult because I'm very split into falling in love with Six Senses and their treetop dining pod and the most opulence in the Maldives and this dream job where friends at school were just like, what did you do? You just lay around on the beach and hope to find buyers? And one of them was like, because I was explaining how my job was to very softly sell residences. And so a lot of the time, I would get a call to say, "This villa owner's here," or, "this villa owner's at the spa or the beach." And so I'd casually be around to have a conversation. One of my friends is like, it's a bit like a whore, Harsha. You're just hiding around and hoping to strike up a conversation. There was that life—obviously not the whore part of it—but I was surrounded by Russian and Indian billionaires thinking about where they should invest the extra $5 million. And then I was so aware of the power they had to actually change so many lives.

And I remember speaking to people I worked with and said, my father's non-profit is called Mission for Vision and one of their donors has restaurants all over London and they have £1 given to Mission for Vision at the end of every bill. And so the bills are often £100, £200, no one's noticing this pound, but that pound is really powerful. And I remember saying to people I worked with, "Can't we just put this on the bill? Can't we just put something on the room bill? Can't we?" And when you know the charity so well—given it's my dad's charities—the transparency is there. Why can't you do that? And it was really difficult, it was an amazing three, four years that taught me the power of what true hospitality feels like and what barefoot luxury really is. And working with Six Senses really was for me, one of the highest levels of hospitality, but at the same time, it was really difficult because even when I worked, for example, I interned at the Aman for a little while in Sri Lanka. And that's when I really struggled, because I saw all these hotels being developed and all this luxury and all this money being spent and all these restaurants popping up. And then I saw very visually the locals who were sitting outside opposite on the beach, kind of just watching everything happen. And I realized that they don't feel like there's a place for them at all. They can't walk into the hotels—or they didn't think they could walk into the hotels and they didn't think they could get a job. And so for me, it was tricky. And so that's why I felt really grateful when I came across Sala Baï in Cambodia, because I thought, okay, someone's connecting these worlds that I love and I feel so connected to, but I was looking for that connection.

MC: I think sometimes it's easiest for travelers to deal with that one dollar or few dollars tacked onto bills but when it comes to making more impactful choices maybe, we just shut down a little bit, overwhelmed by a way of moving forward. How do we get travelers more excited and invested in making those larger mindful and responsible travel decisions?

HL: I've been thinking about this, because I'm traveling right at the moment and I'm thinking, how are you practicing what you're preaching? And so what am I doing? Okay, I have the nonprofit, but what am I doing right now when I'm staying at this hotel or when I'm staying in this Airbnb? And I think it's all, honestly, a lot of it is going to be on the hotels and the Airbnbs and the industry and the operators to make it easy for the guest. I think that's the huge, huge part of it. And the social credit card is something that I feel really passionately about. That's something my husband and I were talking in Sag Harbor, as we did every day for the year, just locked in that house together. And so we were talking about this article that I was invited to write for Condé Nast [Traveler]. And we were talking about what Saira had created was the CSR menu. And it was a menu that you get when you check in or when you're lying by your bedside in your guest room in a hotel or by the pool or somewhere, there's this menu where guests are shown just a laminated menu in my mind where you can either donate time or funds. And so what do you have? Do you have $20? Do you have $200? Do you have two hours? Understanding what kind of currency they want to use, whether it's money or whether it's time. And from there, giving almost this menu to the guest to say, "Would you like to do X, Y, Z? Would you like to talk about what it is that you do?" Whether you might be curating music for hotels, which is one of the things my husband does. It could be something like that. You're really passionate about music or you're a journalist. And just educating people, local people there, with things that they may not know or may not have thought about in terms of how they can sustain their own lives. And so I think that's a really simple act of creating this menu. And then we took it one step further with the social credit card where I think maybe I was a bit idealistic thinking, yes, people would love to donate time and funds if you just put a menu in front of them. But then my husband reminded me as he often does that I think you need to reward people with something like loyalty points. And so what if you did this two hours, close by to the hotel, if not in the hotel or the Airbnb or wherever you are and taught this class and then as a reward, you got points which could then lead to an upgrade or a wine tasting or a massage or whatever it is that feels experientially rewarding to you. The idea of a social credit card, I think could really, really impact the way hospitality and hotel operators and owners enter communities—and more so actually I think it's going to impact the way communities will look at hospitality and look at hotels opening and look at travelers coming in. Instead of being kind of apprehensive and resentful and scared that all the resources are going to be taken up, they're going to be excited about what they can learn or what's going to be contributed. Or is that kind of borewell that needs to be restored, going to be restored now because a hotel is opening? It could change dramatically just the way people look at hotels and restaurants opening all over the world.

LA: Well and you saying that makes me think about how right at the start of this conversation, you said that just the word “responsible” makes you think of rules and being told off at school for doing something wrong. And I think often people feel quite self conscious about their own actions in that context. And sort of, that seems a way to actually get people excited about something. I think for most people do want to do good, but at the same time, this helps it not feel like a chore?

HL: It's so hard, isn't it? This is your holiday. I'm all about holidays. I'm all about balance and work-life balance and so you're on holiday. You want to relax, you don't necessarily want to think, what can I do to make everyone's life around me better? Because this is your holiday. It's your time. But the funny thing is that the minute you do spend those two hours talking to someone or the minute you do give back or you go and visit somewhere or help to sustain a local farm down the road or something, that becomes your most rewarding experience of your trip. And that's the thing that you're going to go back and tell people about. And that's what I keep trying to drill in is that you're not going to go back and say, "Oh, I had the best cocktail," or, "I had the best sleep."

You're going to say, "Oh, actually this hotel made it super easy and we met this local group of women. And we taught them the very basics of a business plan.” And you're going to create those relationships and I think you're going to go back to that place and you're going to want to probably reconnect with those women that you spoke to and see how they did. And that's going to be the reason you go back to that hotel or that location, I believe is because of what you brought to it. And it's almost subconscious because I think, [being] responsible and doing good and nonprofits have such burdensome values sometimes when you think about it—like a do-gooder.

And I don't really believe in that. I think it has to be fun. And going back to Mother Teresa, she had a real laugh. I'm sure not all the time, but I saw her laughing and that was the impact she had on me and the jokes she would make with my dad. And I just feel like, it has to be fun and it has to almost subtly be doing good. It's not for the people who really want to bang on about how much good they did. I don't know that necessarily that's going to be sustainable.

MC: Earlier you said that it's kind of on the brands and the hotels and the resorts to provide their travelers with ways to access a more responsible way of moving around. How do you feel brands should be holding themselves accountable to promoting responsible tourism and responsible travel?

HL: I think today it is very necessary for brands to look at what they're doing in terms of corporate social responsibility. And I think that they realize even if they don't want to, that their guests are looking for how to connect with the local community and how they can get purpose out of their visits and their holidays and things like that. I'm seeing it, just as a nonprofit, seeing the amount of inquiries that are coming in to say, "Love what you do and how can I help?" And I'm like, great, jump in. Let me know what you're good at. But I think brands are realizing it's becoming necessary. And I think what they don't realize is how to do it because I don't blame brands and I don't blame hotels because their primary focus has been getting guests. It used to be heads in beds. Now it's tables and restaurants and where's their revenue coming from, but they're not schools. I don't blame them for not trying to educate the local community, as well as open a hotel.

But I do think that it's important and I think there are very simple steps that you can make when you enter a community. And what I think one of the approaches is, is to understand kind of who the chiefs are in the communities. That's what we do when we do a school. We're like, okay, who's the so-called mayor of this town? And it could be like in Todos Santos, it could be a girl who was about 25, who just knew everyone grew up there, was well respected, will live there I'm sure for the rest of her life. And it could be her, it could be someone who is her friend's mother, who we also got to know who was in her seventies and was one of our students. It could be a whole range of maybe five what we're calling cultural advisors. And so you put them together, you put them on a board and you ask them what they need. And I think that's what brands and hotels and resorts and restaurants now need to start thinking is, okay, let's not go in and quite often you'll see, “We donated the football field.”{ I'm like, that's great, but they don't have a bus to get to work. You know what I mean? They don't have water. And so really my dad taught me primarily, he focuses on what people need. A right to sight, to water, to clean water, and to healthcare. What do people need? Understand from them what they need, I don't know. And then list it out and that's how you kind of create this menu. Maybe they want to learn things. Maybe they do need funds, who knows? But listen to what they're saying and then create and then build this relationship with them. \

LA: For many of us, if not all of us, the pandemic has forced us to sort of reassess many of the ways that we choose to live our lives. What have been some of your learnings, both as a business owner and as a traveler coming out of this? Or still in this?

HL: I would say, firstly as a business owner, I've been very focused on as a nonprofit, we have to have revenue streams and hotels should be funding the schools for all of the reasons that we know: they have lower turnover and brand loyalty, etc. And so I was so focused for the last, I guess, five or six years on hotels funding the schools that I, as a registered nonprofit, didn't think of fundraising, and didn't really focus my efforts on building community and fundraising and going to governments and writing grants and things that nonprofits do—and do for a reason. And so for me, through the pandemic, I started to think well, first of all, hotels may not and don't have the funds that they did before the pandemic. And so they'd be less likely to be able to fund our schools in full. But there's still the interest and there's still the desire from the hotels and from the brands to want to connect with communities and do schools—they just can't fund them all. So we're now going into a more kind of blended funding model for our schools where we're still going to ask the hotels to pay a smaller portion of the costs for the school. But we're also going to focus much more heavily on fundraising.

We're also switching into both pop up schools, which I think can still be really successful in the right markets, but also into permanent schools. And so the two schools that we're fundraising for right now are in Cabo in London, where we'll have permanent schools—as in still entirely nonprofit, still for the local communities, but in markets where hotels are seeing so much turnover. And I think, you know, obviously, with the pandemic and labor shortage being one of the biggest crisis that hospitality has seen, our timing is actually quite good at this point, to start to think more about opening up in urban markets like like London, even like Cabo, like New York, where hotels will then have this kind of ongoing, fresh source of local talent, still working with nonprofits, still working with community colleges, still hopefully working with previously incarcerated people, refugees, sex trafficking [victims], getting into the markets, I guess the demographics that really really speak to me and work and feel like we can really have a strong impact and and really meeting the strongest need I feel like hospitality has had in a while in terms of finding great talent locally.

MC: You're in Portugal right now. You were in Mexico for two months and when we talked, when we first announced that you were joining the board, you talked about wanting to travel somewhere, but travel somewhere and stay for months at a time. As things do open back up, where do you want to go next?

HL: I'm in Portugal and there's a lot to explore. And I think the idea of just staying in Portugal, might've been a bit optimistic and not leaving at all for 10 years, I think is what I told you. I think we'll hop around a little bit, but close by, I would say. Exploring probably Spain, as well as Portugal this summer. Having just spent two months in Mexico, we're now thinking which we weren't, maybe we're going to split our time between six months Mexico and six months Portugal. That’s kind of our plan as of today.

And so we have only been two weeks in Portugal. It is a fascinating country and I am excited to really explore a lot of it. But that's the plan now is hopefully escaping when it gets cold if we can. We still have no responsibilities and no children and no mortgage. We're living that free life as long as we can. And then, hopefully coming back to Portugal and jumping between those two places. Mexico is just magical still. It's in our blood. We had a sip of mescal in Portugal last night and we're like, oh, we got to go back.

MC: Two weeks and you're already.

HL: We're already out.

LA: Dream combo of Portugal and Mexico.

HL: But who knows? Who knows? You ask me this next week and who knows? But that right now it does sound really dreamy and it also kind of bratty at the same time, but that's the honest answer.

MC: Well, if people want to follow your journey between Portugal and Mexico, where can they find you and your business on the internet?

HL: The website is www.sairahospitality.com. It's S-A-I-R-A and Instagram it's just Saira Hospitality.

MC: Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining us. You can find me @ohheytheremere.

LA: And me @lalehannah.

MC: Be sure to follow Women Who Travel on Instagram and subscribe to our biweekly newsletter. We will link Harsha's social media in the show notes. Be sure to check all of her work out and we'll talk to you next week.