Travel
The 2021 Nestor Wrap-Up: Year-in-Review
2021 has been a year of change for everyone. Travel restrictions have come and gone, while governments can’t seem to make up their minds on whether to lock down economies. And yet, despite the challenges, many businesses have thrived during this period. And Nestor is no exception.
Indeed, while it’s been a tumultuous few years for the industry, and despite half of the year having covid restrictions, we still managed to achieve a 78% occupancy across our portfolio of properties.
But our luck doesn’t come from anywhere. Our team work hard and go above and beyond to exceed expectations and provide a second-to-none service for our guests.
Milestone by milestone, we’re excited to share with you our Year-In-Review, 2021, broken down by the most important moments to date.
A Greener London
Since as early as the pandemic began (feels like a zillion years ago), one of the major trends we’ve seen uncovered is a renewed focus on sustainable travel and sustainable tourism. After a year of quite intense changes, we’ve all looked inwards, while trying to make more conscious choices as a business.
After learning that 84% of UK consumers feel being more environmentally friendly is important to them, we decided to implement some serious changes.
As a business, we want to offer our guests more forms of sustainable travel. The pandemic has given us a chance to focus on what’s really important to us, and look more closely into our supply chains to initiate actions to reduce our carbon footprint, and ultimately become a more sustainable travel company.
Paperless Guides
Like many businesses, this year we embraced the digital!
This includes digital house manuals, local area guides, and digital forms to book extra services like breakfast and taxis, which are accessible via QR codes found in each of our properties.
Our neighbourhood guides are designed to help our guests get to know what their new area has to offer and find tried and tested places to visit, eat and drink. We try to support local, independent businesses and encourage our guests to support the local community as much as possible!
Our Lovely, Eco-Friendly In-House Products
We’ve also taken the time to source local, vegan, low impact products, a project that’s remained close to our hearts.
You will only find brands that we deem ethical in our properties. Say goodbye to miniatures, we don’t approve of throwing away plastics! Instead, we offer all of our toiletries, welcome items, and cooking essentials in refillables.
Planting Trees to Offset Carbon Emissions
1 x tree for every booking
This year, one of our biggest achievements and honours was partnering with @moretreeshq to gift each of our guests a tree whenever they book direct with us 🌿 making each guest’s stay in London a little more sustainable 🌳
As a token of our appreciation, we’re able to give our guests a tangible gift that will go towards offsetting some of their carbon emissions during their stay.
Just some of the reasons why tree planting helps:
- Absorbs carbon from the atmosphere
- Provides farms with work to support the local economy
- Gives someone an income and a skill to feed their family
- Protects animals from deforestation
- Increases rainfall, purify water and improve crop yield.
Find out more about our More Trees initiative here.
Help us grow our virtual forest by booking a sustainable place to stay in London. We’re dying to gift you a tree and we’ll do it for every direct booking you make. You can sleep soundly in the knowledge that you’re staying in one of the most earth-nurturing accommodations you can find in the area, taking care of our collective home as well as yours.
We’re Not in This Fight Alone
In this powerful global fight against the climate crisis, we’ve also changed a few of our suppliers and teamed up with brands on this mass movement to help reverse decades of climate abuse.
We partnered with Cole & Co. – a sustainable toiletries company that creates sensorial, luxury toiletries that give you a fresh, mindful experience – and all products have been selected for their high quality, safety and sustainability.
We also partnered with one of the world’s greenest companies tackling human waste – Who Gives A Crap.
Who Gives A Crap is a local company that supplies all our properties with eco-friendly lavatory paper, which has been ethically produced and made from materials such as bamboo, recycled paper, and forest-friendly tissue.
Green Friday Weekend
10 x trees + 10% for every booking made
This Black Friday, we launched our very own Green Friday campaign! A playful twist on the popular annual shopping weekend, we decided to turn green. Each guest received a tree planted in their name, plus 10% off any booking made during that weekend.
A simple, yet effective method that brought in several bookings and with that a many of tree planted, and that step closer to our 1000k goal! (more on that next time). We’ve heard from so many of our guests who are eager to make an ever-greater impact on this increasingly urgent issue, so if nothing else we hold our heads high that we’re in a better position going into next year.
Read more here.
The Launch of The Nestor Blog: Tips, tricks and all things Nestor
Well, if you’re reading this now you’re obviously already scrolling through our glorious blog. But, what you might not realise is that we launched the blog only a few months ago, as part of our larger marketing drive.
It’s early days, but it’s been a huge milestone for the company and we’re very excited to keep pushing out relevant news, updates and interesting articles!
So stay tuned – there’s always more on the way!
Thanking YOU!
Thank you to all of our past, present and future guests! We wouldn’t be where we are without your loyalty and support, especially over the past two years!
And, thanks to so many of you who have taken the time to write us a review!
Let’s take a moment to celebrate our 2021 review of the year…
Shout out to Hissa!
We’re G2G! – Signed, Sealed, Delivered
As a hospitality business, we have always championed rigorous cleaning practices, but we have evolved our measures to further minimise the risk of coronavirus spread. Our additional measures include:
- We comply with all UK government regulations and guidance relating to travel and accommodation and we are committed to the health and safety of our guests and staff.
- Visit Britian awarded us the “We’re Good To Go” seal of approval! This award signals that a tourism and hospitality business has adapted its operations in line with respective government and public health guidance and has a COVID-19 risk assessment in place to aid staff training, social distancing and cleanliness.
Final Thoughts
We look back with gratitude for all the things that helped us get through such a challenging year. 2021 was a huge year, not only for our team, but for all of our suppliers, our eco-friendly partners, investors, and guests.
Let us take this opportunity to express our heartfelt thanks to all of you in our community who have been part of some of our favourite moments from this year!
Nestor Family
And last but not least, thank you to the collective Nestor family for your unconditional efforts and hard work.
We are excited about the endless possibilities that 2022 may bring and we can’t wait to keep on growing the Nestor family!
From the cleaners to our check-in staff to our investors, to our guest experience team, thanks a million!! It’s been an unprecedented year for all, 2022 we’re ready for ya!!!!
Stay tuned for our 2022 report soon where we’ll be outlining our key goals for the coming year.
The best is yet to come as we continue on our mission and journey to becoming a more eco-conscious business. Stay with us as we aim to become the number 1 sustainable accommodation of choice for London and beyond!
Wishing you all a wonderful, safe, happy New Year!
Nestor