SHINTA MANI WILD WINS MUSE AWARD
Shinta Mani Wild, a Bensley Collection Hotel, has won a platinum 2020 Muse Design Award for Architecture in Hospitality.
The resort is, in many ways, a culmination of all that Bensley has learnt over 35 years of making hotels. Bensley describes the project as, “a utopia of sustainability,” with low impact on the land, and doubling as a research and conservation centre. Guests are taught about Tmor Rung and the local flora and fauna by the on-site naturalists, and accompany rangers and researchers to check camera traps and study the forests and their inhabitants – a unique opportunity to explore untamed lands with the people that know them best.
Another option of many on the luxury adventure is exploring the untrammeled waterways of South East Asia’s last wild estuarine ecosystem aboard one of Shinta Mani Wild’s private, Bensley-designed, luxury expedition boats. Back at the resort, guests zipline into the ‘Landing Zone Bar’, perched on the edge of the sanctuary’s biggest waterfall, and sample locally inspired food with ingredients sourced through the Shinta Mani Foundation, foraged from the surrounding forests and on occasion flown in from all corners of the globe at the Waterfall Restaurant. The Boulders Spa, meanwhile, is a full service Khmer Spa featuring natural, chemical-free products by Khmer Tonics.
Shinta Mani Wild is a new model of resort, which conserves and protects threatened wildlands, but also provides long-term employment opportunities to the inhabitants of this region, where there is little infrastructure and fewer opportunities to work. Through its properties and hospitality school in Siem Reap, Shinta Mani provides opportunities for education and training so the camp’s neighbours can become well paid hospitality professionals, should they choose to. Shinta Mani also offers ongoing community outreach and environmental education programs to help its neighbours better understand their environment, to more successfully coexist with it. A community that is educated about their environment is one that will be sustainability prosperous in that environment.