Roy Peires has run hotels on the Costa del Sol since the 1980s. The part of the business he talks about now is the part that generates no revenue at all.
Kind Holidays started in 2012, and its first act was to give rooms to soldiers. The programme was one of the first donors to Give Us Time, the charity founded by former UK Defence Secretary Sir Liam Fox, which arranges free accommodation at hotels and resorts for military personnel and their families, many of them living with PTSD, physical injury, or both. Award-winning almost immediately, it might reasonably have stayed a single, tidy arrangement.
2016: opening the doors wider
In 2016 Peires decided that Kind Holidays should donate space at IDILIQ Hotels & Resorts to a far broader group: charities supporting very sick and terminally ill children, bereavement charities, children’s hospices, and the Carers Trust, founded by Princess Anne. A dozen new charity partners came on board.
Within eighteen months the effect was obvious, and not only on the families arriving. It had moved through the entire IDILIQ team. A couple more years made it clearer still: this was something with the potential to touch the whole hospitality sector. At which point the sector, and most of the world, shut down. COVID paused everything until 2022, when Kind Holidays restarted with an explicit mission attached to it, which was to tell other hoteliers.
What a fortnight did for Katie
Alistair Witham wrote after his family stayed at one of the group’s resorts in Orlando, Florida. His daughter Katie had been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease shortly before the trip and, given her existing health conditions, had found it difficult to cope. Then, a couple of weeks before departure, something shifted.
“She quickly transformed from sadness to excitement and happiness that seemed to overflow,” he wrote. Katie, usually shy and hesitant, went on rides she would never have considered and outlasted her parents. “The memories we created as a family during those two weeks are beyond precious. They serve as a reminder to Katie and all of us that life extends far beyond hospitals, medicines, and treatments.”
The arithmetic of 2,300 people
More than 2,300 people have now stayed free of charge, through over a dozen charity partners. IDILIQ’s resorts are used almost exclusively by families and couples, which makes them a natural fit. But Peires is quick to point out that business-focused hotels near large children’s hospitals have an even more useful room to give. Parents of very sick children often have to give up work, which rules out holidays and also rules out staying near a child who is in hospital for weeks at a time.
The programme sits inside a much older habit. The IDILIQ Foundation’s charity work, from the ADIMI care centre in Mijas to Cudeca to the Christmas Eve meals, began long before Kind Holidays had a name, and the two now feed each other: Cudeca families are among those offered free stays. Roy Peires’s own account sets the two side by side.
Conclusion
The talks that two recipients gave to more than 300 IDILIQ staff are the clearest argument for any of this, and they were filmed; the recorded talks on Vimeo say more than a summary of them can. What Peires wants is for other operators to copy the idea rather than admire it, which is the subject of a practical guide for hoteliers.