Legacy Hotels & Resorts is one of the UK’s leading hotel developers and management companies of branded and independent hotels and over the last 18 years has operated and supported over 100 hotels and leisure assets. As of April 2023, the portfolio manages 26 leisure assets with 2,348 guestrooms across 11 different brands.

After identifying the need to improve internal governance around environmental and social issues, Legacy Hotels & Resorts decided to upskill its leadership team, formalise an ESG committee with representation across the business and work towards making the business more sustainable.   

To assist Legacy in understanding the context of its business and to help prioritise ESG issues within the market, the Savills team delivered five processes including a full ESG peer review, legal review, themed workshops and a materiality assessment to understand the group’s material issues and engage with key stakeholders and employees. The outputs of these exercises will help frame the ESG Strategy and ESG Implementation plan for the business going forward.

Within Legacy’s first ESG strategy the business has committed to embedding ESG factors at the centre of its decisions and operations and has identified four strategy areas of priority: energy & carbon; environment & waste; governance & compliance and safe & inclusive environments.  

Within the strategy the group and its ESG committee will be actively working to develop a science-based net zero carbon plan, procure 100% renewable electricity and understand opportunities for solar generation across the portfolio, integrate wellbeing principles into all new developments and refurbishments and consider opportunities for green building certifications and develop a sustainable procurement policy.

Brad Johnson, Director in Sustainability at Savills, comments: “ESG continues to be a major driving force across all real estate sectors and it’s been a pleasure to work with Legacy Hotels & Resorts to understand its requirements and help the business develop a considered approach to improving its environmental and social impact. The hospitality sector is being pushed from both its customer base and the wider market to be more accountable and have strong governance structures. Legacy have taken considerable steps to setting up a strong ESG governance structure and outlining its longer term vision."

Andy Townsend, Chief Executive Office at Legacy Hotels & Resorts, comments: “We understood early on that this is a complex and diverse topic. Key for us was to be truthful to ourselves as to what our starting point was and ensure we build a robust platform to take small but meaningful steps to create a robust ESG strategy.”

Calum Colquhoun, Regional Operations Manager, Legacy Hotels & Resorts, adds: “Savills guided us expertly through what would have otherwise been a lengthy and arduous task of setting up the ESG baseline and strategy. This helped us bring the ESG Committee together, keep workstreams moving and achieve the targets we set in year one and kept everyone motivated along the way. We look forward to now moving the programme further onto the next stage of implementation.”

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