John Dick, Langham hotel managing director, and Nicholas Blake, kitchenhand-turned-environmental advisor.
John Dick, Langham hotel managing director, and Nicholas Blake, kitchenhand-turned-environmental advisor
Photograph by John McDermott
Eighteen months ago, hotelier John Dick saw an opportunity and jumped at it.
The managing director of Auckland’s Langham hotel was in Hong Kong for the international hotel group’s company-wide meeting. When the chief executive asked for a volunteer to drive the group’s environmental policy, John looked around the room, full of hotel managers from all over the world, and quickly stuck up his hand.
Back in Auckland, Langham kitchenhand Nicholas Blake was seeing opportunities everywhere.
After graduating with a Masters in Environmental Science from Auckland University months earlier, the 24-year-old was scraping out a living scraping plates at The Langham while hunting for work in his field.
In the midst of a busy kitchen, he couldn’t help but notice opportunities for the five-star hotel to improve its environmental practices. Nicholas sprang into action. He prepared a 30-page report recommending ways for the hotel to improve its environmental management, and sent it to HR.
When the paper landed on John Dick’s desk, the Langham’s new global environmental champion sat up and took notice. “I thought, ‘This is karma, it’s freaky’.”
Nicholas was swiftly pulled into his managing director’s office, wearing a suit borrowed from his girlfriend’s dad. The executive suite was a far cry from the kitchen. “We went into John’s office, and it was like Knights of the Round Table,” he says, still slightly awestruck.
Two weeks later, Nicholas was out of his rubber gloves and into a suit of his own, with the title ‘environmental project supervisor’. He wasted no time implementing the improvements he’d recommended from the kitchen. “The company gave me an opportunity,” says Nicholas, “so I said, ‘Right, I’m going to show you what I can do’.”
Four months later, The Langham became the first—and only—New Zealand hotel to receive the international Green Globe certificate. Green Globe’s exhaustive sustainability audit, specific to the travel and tourism industry, normally takes 24 months to complete. Nicholas wrote the hotel’s environmental standards, policies and documentation, and put his environmental initiatives in place in just two months.
“Nicholas is committed,” says John. “He’s passionate, he’s enthusiastic, he gets excited. That excitement is infectious, and that’s important when you’re trying to bring your colleagues along with you on the journey.”
The progression from kitchenhand to right-hand-man of the managing director isn’t usually so direct, and John found himself with a bit of explaining to do. Mind you, so did Nicholas. “I had to walk into the staff café in a suit and I felt very out of place! It grew on me, though.”
Nicholas has learned a lot from his mentor. “John’s someone I can look up to, and he’s showed me a lot. Everyone talks so highly of John, especially other hoteliers. He’s very much a visionary person. He’s a fantastic mentor.”
The working relationship has changed John, too. The past 18 months have been rejuvenating, he says. “A younger person questions the way an older person might do something. I love that interaction, because he sees things differently to me.
“The passion, the excitement, the determination he’s shown has taught me a lot. It’s given me enthusiasm. It’s lovely to see things through someone else’s eyes.”
Next, John’s off to China to oversee the development of a new, super-efficient Langham Place hotel in Beijing. He sees a future where hotels act like trees, cleaning air and water, consuming more waste than they create. He’ll work for five more years before retiring; given the pace of change he and Nicholas have set over the past 18 months, that’s an eternity. “I think we can do quite a lot in five years. Don’t you, Nicholas?”
