By Angela Green: ESG culture at Exclusive Collection delivering to people, purpose, and planet.
Exclusive Collection, the UK’s first B Corp hotel company, has launched its latest Impact Report detailing its 2022/23 ESG initiatives and activities, outcomes, and future actions.
Highlights in the Impact Report
- 2% reduction in carbon emissions, water usage and waste generation.
- Annual energy reduction of 4%.
- £105,000 donated to its preferred charities Hospitality Action, Bug Life and Protect Earth, as well as making a £35,000 investment to help students at Eastleigh College learn and practice the business of hospitality.
- 70% of Royal Berkshire’s annual supplier spend sits with organisations who are within a 50-mile radius and more than 80% of Hillfield’s suppliers are within 25-miles of Pennyhill Park.
- Implementation of Klimato to calculate, report and carbon label event menus, as well as educate meeting planners on more plant-friendly menu choices.
- The roll out of OLIO at all hotels for any unused food that is left over from events.
Through LandApp, data led maps of each hotel and estate are helping to improve carbon capture and to support local habitats and increase biodiversity.
For example: at South Lodge, 19,500 vines were planted to form a vineyard in collaboration with Ridgeview Wine Estate, as well as 1,267 trees and 317 shrubs being added. It’s anticipated the vineyard will produce 30,000 bottles of English sparkling wine in the coming years, many of which will be used in the hotels.
Boutique skincare brand Pelegrims is developing the full-circle use of the vines leaf extracts as in-house skincare products.
A net promoter score of 91% of the team saying: ‘I would recommend Exclusive to friends and family as a great place to work’.
Exclusive Collection has been recognised for its conscientious stance on business for more than four decades and achieved B Corp status in 2021. Through its focussed framework around people, planet, and purpose the hotel company is aiming for a 10% plus increase when it is re-assessed for B Corp certification later in 2024.
Danny Pecorelli, MD of Exclusive Collection, comments: “We’ve made huge gains in 2022/23 and have a framework of commitments for the upcoming years covering our people, our local communities, supplier partners and of course to better our carbon road map.
“We recognise that we are custodians of our historic hotels and estates and by educating and constantly looking for improvement we can continue to use our business as a force for good. We finished 23 on a high with Tom Hamblet winning MasterChef: The Professionals.
“We go in to 2024 with the summer launch of our luxe-lakeside lodges at South Lodge and welcoming Ansty Hall fully into the collection and in March we celebrate B Corp with other companies who too are using their businesses as a force for good.”
