‘Our guests are our sales and marketing team for our Siem Reap hotel’

De Boer has come to the UK to do the job of a sales and marketing team – because he doesn’t have one. When he took on the role, he made a list of all his non-negotiables, which included employing staff on permanent contracts instead of seasonal ones. The only way he could make the sums work was to cut out sales and marketing, and so he decided not to employ any staff to travel the world, promoting the hotel. “This cutback forced me into making my guests my sales team,” he explains.

By bestowing attractive inclusions such as an endless, complimentary minibar, as much laundry as you need done for free, and an hour in the spa every day for all guests, his strategy to rely on word of mouth is working. “We’ve been TripAdvisor’s top hotel in Cambodia for six years running.”

“It’s so easy to wow a guest simply by doing the opposite of what the big chains do,” he adds.

The hotel’s reputation is all the more impressive when you take into account that more than half of Jaya House’s staff have never been to school. “It takes an average of three months to train a barista or a waiter. They come to me [because they want employment] … the only thing you can’t train is attitude and effort. The rest we can teach,” he says.

For more than seven years now, the hotel has been single-use plastic-free. “It’s not been difficult,” De Boer tells me. All guests are given a reusable bottle – refilling stations are now common in Siem Reap. “I think guests actually choose us because we’re plastic-free,” he says.

However, he admits the food supply chain was a tougher nut to crack: “We’re talking about Cambodia where it’s not uncommon to see bananas individually wrapped,” he says. “We met with all our delivery people and showed them a video of plastic waste in the sea so they understood why we were going down this route. They didn’t all get it straight away – but if they relapsed, we had a word.”

De Boer has strong ties with the Cambodia community. While he was general manager of Shinta Mani Club in Siem Reap prior to Jaya House, he founded the Made in Cambodia Market, to showcase the work of local craftspeople.

In 2016, he co-founded “Refill Not Landfill”, a global campaign to reduce single-use plastic waste, which has now expanded into Thailand, Laos, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Myanmar and New Zealand.

At Jaya House, he has spearheaded the launch of Jaya Organics, luxury natural products, made by the local community, used within the hotel, and sold online for worldwide delivery.

And that’s not all – more recently de Boer has been appointed advisor to the UN and UNWTO in reducing single-use plastic in the tourism industry, bringing hospitality groups and communities together to explore solutions to the problem. In Cambodia, the tourism industry alone uses 4.6 million single-use plastic bottles a month, which end up in rivers, landfill, rice fields or oceans.

“It’s already contributing to climate change,” he tells me. “This year, the rains are a month late. When there’s no rain, the farmers can’t plant, and if they can’t plant, they can’t harvest, which means no income. Yes, things are changing but they’re not changing fast enough.”

I ask if his solution would be to discourage international travel – and stop Angkor Wat becoming another Machu Picchu, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tourists. “On the contrary,” he tells me. “Cambodia is experiencing under tourism – thanks to the impact of reduced flight capacity post-Covid and inflated ticket prices. And Angkor Wat is huge – move away from the crowds, explore the lesser-known temples!”

From the autumn, the flight schedules are returning to pre-pandemic norms: “We know from forward bookings, it’s going to be good,” he predicts. 

With a busy season looming, he’ll be working hard, juggling all his projects and responsibilities, I say. 

“I haven’t worked a day in my life,” he replies – a sure sign of someone who loves what they are doing.