Why Our Forest & Bird Guest Amenities Are Truly Revolutionary

Published on Mar 27, 2017

When your guests arrive in New Zealand, they arrive with preconceptions about what the county is like to live in and how we all live our lives.

Your roles as hoteliers, motel-owners and Airbnb or B&B operators is to both help their stay live up to their expectations and to augment that experience with education about what the country is really like.

For many people running accommodation, guest amenities like shampoo, conditioner, soap and body wash is simply an expenditure – albeit an important expenditure that a guest is bound to notice and use.

But HealthPak’s partnership with Forest & Bird has revolutionised this small part of the guest’s experience: you can now help play a part in preserving and protecting the Kiwi environment, as well as help tell the story of why this protection is so important.

First of all, the story.

We are relaunching the Forest & Bird range using artwork by Kiwi artist Flox, who’s become synonymous with New Zealand birdlife and whose work can be found in homes, galleries and public commissions throughout the country. By using a well-known and well-renowned artist, we are tying into a part of Kiwiana that’s intimately connected to the environment – and playing with the expectations of many visitors who have come to see Kiwi art, but might not expect to see it while they’re in the shower.

The Forest & Bird range is not just an exercise in branding, as well as the five bottled products, three sizes of soap, shower caps etc, we also supply the materials that help you tell the non-profit organisation’s story: 

• We pay the first 12 months for you to become a Forest & Bird member so you can speak from a position of authority on New Zealand environmentalism.
• We provide you with a membership certificate to display within your property to help start the conversation.
• We provide you free-of-charge with full-colour compendium inserts for all your rooms detailing how the Forest & Bird range works.
• We provide you with membership forms to give to your guests.
• You receive the Forest & Bird magazine to display to your guests.

As well as involving your guests with the idea of conservation in New Zealand, the range also allows you to actually take part in helping preserve native forest, birds, oceans, lakes and rivers. We believe Forest & Bird does some excellent work in setting up and managing its 38 reserves and sanctuaries as well as campaigning and informing the public about protecting our landscape, flora and fauna.

Creating New Zealand-made products that are designed to be as environmentally friendly and packaged in recyclable and degradable containers is vitally important to what we do at HealthPak, but when it comes to our Forest & Bird range, we also put our money where our mouth is. Over the past five years, we have sent back $35,000 in royalties to Forest & Bird, and the more successful it becomes, the more money flows back to the organisation.

Our general manager sales & marketing, Jimi Kennedy-Grant, says the range has been wildly popular over the past five years.

“This sort of product just can’t be replicated out of China and we also get to send them (Forest & Bird) cheques for tens of thousands of dollars – both of which make it a pretty damned cool thing to be doing," Jimi says.

“But the success of the range so far has been down to the fact that hoteliers and accommodation providers are intrinsically involved in the environment and it resonates with them – these are people who are usually running accommodation near some pretty amazing places and they want to protect it.

“We do a lot of work to make sure there are magazines available and compendium inserts so that there’s information available, as well as a big certificate from Forest & Bird thanking them for being part of it.”

Forest & Bird Chief Executive Kevin Hague says working with HealthPak gave the organisation the chance to spread their message to hundreds of thousands of people in New Zealand.

“HealthPak has supported Forest & Bird for more than five years and has raised more than $35,000. But it has always been about more than the money - it is great to see a business run by people who are passionate about protecting nature in New Zealand,” Kevin says. “HealthPak are working to lead the way in their industry, encouraging others to think differently with innovative recycling schemes and packaging designed to have as low environmental impact as possible. Like many New Zealand businesses, HealthPak is on a journey to becoming as environmentally sustainable as they possibly can be and it is our goal to help them get there.”

For more information on the new designs of Forest & Bird-branded guest amenities – including how we’ll pay the first 12 months of your membership when you sign up – call us on +64 9 579 6268, email us at info@healthpak.co.nz or contact us via the website.