NH Hotel Group, part of Minor Hotels, reinforces its social commitment by signing new agreements within the Hotels with a Heart programme. This program offers free “pro-bono” accommodation services for families with sick children and adolescents, so that they are accompanied by their relatives throughout the hospitalization process.
In its commitment to build responsible and effective alliances with supportive partners, the company thus begins to collaborate for the first time with the Corall Family and Lovaas Foundation associations. In addition, it has updated the agreement it had with the Josep Carreras Foundation to house patients who need treatment against leukemia and, as a novelty, a new line of accommodation for bone marrow donors has been included.
On the one hand, the mission of Corall Family is to bring sick children from anywhere in Spain, especially minors from families with few resources, to intervene in hospitals in Barcelona. The association is responsible for helping children with congenital heart disease in all aspects of their medical and social life. This agreement is present in several hotels in Barcelona, where a “pro-bono” accommodation service will be offered in 200 rooms per year, free of charge for families.
On the other hand, Lovaas Foundation is in charge of improving the quality of life of children with autism and their families. Through the agreement with this foundation, NH will offer free “pro-bono” accommodation services for families, in 150 rooms per year in hotels in Spain and Italy. These will be aimed primarily at the team of therapists specialized in the methodology based on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA-Applied Behavior Analysis), since they must travel and carry out their work directly in the homes of children with autism. In this way, children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, who are in a difficult social and economic situation, are offered early and intensive behavioral intervention programs.
As for the Josep Carreras Foundation, for more than 30 years it has sought to make leukemia, one day, a 100% curable disease, tirelessly promoting all kinds of projects for the benefit of patients and science. Thanks to the agreement signed, NH will offer 70 rooms per year free of charge for patients who need to go for treatment as well as for bone marrow donors.
Elena Ruiz, VP of Sustainable Business at NH Hotel Group, pointed out: “We are very happy to see how this project continues to grow, adding new partnerships every day and, with this, reaching more families. Hotels with a Heart has always stood out for being a program that is faithful to the key values of hospitality, as it allows NH Hotel Group to help through what it does best: serve, always with a smile.”
Since its inception, Hotels with a Heart has provided pro bono accommodation services at no cost to families for more than 29,000 hotel nights. Specifically, during 2022, 59 hotels have been involved in the project with 1,438 rooms in collaboration with 22 NGOs. With the new agreements signed now, the accommodation services are extended to 470 more rooms, which are added to the already existing alliances with Menudos Corazones, the reference solidarity partner of this program; and with other international foundations such as Make a Wish.
More than 15 years welcoming and accompanying families
The NH Hotel Group's Hotels with a Heart solidarity project was born in 2005, with the aim of helping NGOs and foundations to meet their accommodation needs. This action is intended to ensure that those children and adolescents who suffer from a disease that forces them to travel to hospitals far from home, can be accompanied by their families. To achieve this, NH makes rooms available to families in hotels close to the hospitals where the minors are admitted. All this in a "pro bono" concept at no cost.
This initiative, which the company has been carrying out for 18 years, has been consolidated through agreements with hospitals and foundations in various countries where NH operates, thanks to the participation of employees who voluntarily host these families and the "ambassadors" of the program in each of the hotels where it takes place. Each hotel has a person who attends to families and helps to make their stay as comfortable as possible.
With this project, NH Hotel Group has promoted the inclusiveness of the tourism sector in the communities in which it is present, helping children and adolescents in vulnerable situations of illness who need to be accompanied in their medical processes, thus reducing social inequalities.