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Zafiro Hotels has raised €15,000 this year during the “Red-Nose Hotels” campaign organised by the Balearic Islands Hotel Federation for the sixth consecutive year to support the NGO Sonrisa Médica. The campaign is part of the hotel industry’s Corporate Social Responsibility programme, with organisers announcing that this year has seen "extraordinary results".
Zafiro hotels raised a total of €12,861.69 through the participation of customers in different activities every week in each hotel. The Zafiro Hotels group has decided to contribute the extra amount required to take the total donation up to €15,000. The CEO of Zafiro Hotels, Antonia Plomer, thanked customers for their generous contributions and also the involvement and dedication of all the hotel employees, explaining that “both our guests and our employees have played a key role in the fundraising campaign, without them none of this would ever have happened, and it’s really exciting to see how the campaign is getting even better every year. This is something that we all really put a lot of love into.”
Solidarity with the little ones
Every summer, thousands of children have fun in hotels in the Balearic Islands, but there are other less visible situations that take place in other rooms which are very different from those in our hotels. This was the idea behind "Red-Nose Hotels", a campaign to provide support for children who have to spend their summer in hospital rooms, with professional clowns trying to improve their stay by bringing laughter, fun and games to hospitals.
Sonrisa Médica was very grateful to receive the news about the funds raised and sent one of their professional clowns to visit us in Alcudia and receive a giant cheque from Antonia and María Plomer, together with the Deputy Director of Operations and campaign coordinator at Zafiro Hotels, Marc Balaguer. The clown visited all the staff in our headquarters which was a great chance for a few laughs and some nice photos.
Six years of "Red-Nose Hotels"
In its first year, “Red-node hotels” was just a one-week campaign. This year, in its sixth annual edition, the campaign was extended to three months at the request of participating hotels, allowing us to raise far more funds. "We also managed to make the campaign more visible so that more customers were aware of it and we could distribute our fundraising activities better, ensuring it didn’t become tiresome for neither our guests nor our employees”, declared Marc Balaguer, Deputy Director of Operations at Zafiro Hotels.
Elena Alzamora, Corporate Director of Human Resources at Zafiro Hotels, believes that “as a family business, this campaign is a true reflection of our strong commitment to the local community. It’s a really nice social responsibility project both because of its objectives and also the way it is carried out, getting both our employees and customers involved.”
Helping kids adapt to being in hospital
As part of an adaptation to new technologies, Sonrisa Médica have told us that some of the funds will help create a welcome video in which clowns will introduce kids to the hospital and make it a little easier for them to adapt to their new environment.
The Director of Sonrisa Médica, Marta Barrio, says they will be creating an interactive game in which children can choose the clown they want to play with on their mobiles. "Obviously the experience is very different on a screen, but in this case we are using new technology to help kids feel more comfortable in the hospital rather than as a distraction to avoid them thinking about their surroundings. We don’t want kids to forget where they are, but we do want them to see the hospital through different eyes and learn to feel at ease in a hospital setting."