Most hospitality businesses measure unused inventory as lost revenue. Roy Peires measures it differently — as an opportunity. Since launching Kind Holidays, the award-winning charitable accommodation initiative connected to IDILIQ Hotels & Resorts, Peires has demonstrated that the same rooms generating commercial income can also restore dignity, provide respite, and create memories for families in extraordinary circumstances.
The Origins of the Programme
Kind Holidays launched in 2012. Among its first recipients was Give Us Time, a charity founded by former UK Defence Secretary Sir Liam Fox that organises free accommodation for military personnel and their families — many of whom are managing post-traumatic stress disorder or physical injuries sustained in service. The decision to partner with Give Us Time early in the programme’s history signalled Peires’s intent: Kind Holidays was not designed to serve one cause, but to establish a replicable model capable of supporting a wide range of vulnerable groups.
By 2016, Peires expanded the programme to include charities supporting very sick and terminally ill children, bereavement organisations, Children’s Hospices, and the Carers Trust — an organisation founded by Princess Anne. Within 18 months of onboarding a dozen new charity partners, the effect of the programme had become visible not only in the families receiving accommodation but throughout the IDILIQ team itself.
The Scale and Impact
To date, more than 2,300 people have received free holidays through Kind Holidays, facilitated through over a dozen charity partners. These are families navigating terminal diagnoses, bereavements, the psychological toll of military service, and the sustained demands of caring for a critically ill child. For many, a stay at an IDILIQ resort represents a period of normalcy and calm that would otherwise be inaccessible.
Peires has described the impact directly: “We created Kind Holidays as a seed of hope for families going through unimaginably difficult times. I have seen the life affirming impact this initiative has had not just on the recipients of these holidays but on the Team Members at our hotels.”
Following the disruption of the COVID-19 period, Kind Holidays resumed its operations in 2022 with a renewed ambition — to extend the model beyond IDILIQ properties and into the wider hospitality sector.
A Template for the Industry
What makes Kind Holidays distinct from a conventional corporate social responsibility programme is its design as a transferable framework. The initiative is documented at www.kindholidays.com, where Peires has published a practical guide for other hoteliers seeking to establish equivalent programmes. The site also includes direct links and contact details for charity partners actively seeking additional accommodation — both in the United Kingdom and abroad.
The logic behind this approach is straightforward. Hotels operating near major children’s hospitals, for instance, can offer accommodation to families whose homes are too far away to commute during prolonged treatment periods. Peires has also called on airlines, cruise operators, restaurants, and transport providers to consider how their own inventory and services could be applied to similar ends.
The Internal Effect
The impact of Kind Holidays on IDILIQ’s own staff is a detail Peires returns to consistently. Team members at IDILIQ resorts in both Costa del Sol and Tenerife engage directly with the families staying under the programme, and that contact has had a measurable effect on morale and sense of purpose. This dimension — the effect on the people delivering the service, not only those receiving it — is central to how Peires articulates the value of the initiative.
A Replicable Act of Hospitality
Kind Holidays represents a specific argument: that the hospitality industry holds latent capacity to address human need at scale, and that doing so costs less than the value it creates. For the families who have stayed at IDILIQ properties through the programme, the experience is not a marketing exercise — it is, in many cases, the last holiday they will take together. That Roy Peires recognised this possibility in 2012 and built a functioning, scalable model around it is the clearest statement of what Kind Holidays is.
About Roy Peires
Roy Peires is the founder of the IDILIQ Group and the creator of Kind Holidays, an award-winning charitable accommodation initiative operating through IDILIQ Hotels & Resorts. Launched in 2012, Kind Holidays has provided free accommodation to more than 2,300 people through partnerships with over a dozen charities. The programme serves military families, terminally ill children and their families, bereavement groups, Children’s Hospices, and carers. A free guide for hoteliers looking to establish similar programmes is available at www.kindholidays.com.
