sustainable masterplanned community Quinta do Lago
our ‘Green & Healthy Places’ podcast series takes a deep-dive into the role of sustainability, wellbeing and community in real estate and hospitality, for episode 16 we are with Sean Moriarty, CEO of Quinta do Lago in Portugal
A sustainable masterplanned community
Today we are in my old home of Portugal, specifically in the idyllic Algarve region in the south to talk to Sean Moriarty, CEO of Quinta do Lago, a sustainably-minded, masterplanned community development with 50 years of history behind it. The residential resort focuses on outdoor living with 2500 acres of land with only 25% can be developed on.
As well as being home to some, it’s also a tourist destination in its own right with water-efficient golf courses, boutique hotels, a sports campus, restaurants and retail as well as its own nature reserve and a white sand beach, even their own on-site farm.
GUEST / Sean Moriarty, CEO, Quinta do Lago
https://www.quintadolago.com/en/
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Full transcript follows, courtesy of Otter.ai (excuse typos)
Welcome to Episode 16 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we take a deep dive into the themes of wellness and sustainability in real estate and hospitality. Today, we're in my old home of Portugal, specifically in the idyllic Algarve region to the south. Talking to Sean Moriarty, CEO of Quinta de Lago, a sustainably minded, mixed use development with over 50 years of history behind it.
The residential resort focuses on outdoor living with two and a half 1000 acres of land which only 25% can be developed on, as well as being home to some. It's also a tourist destination in its own right, with golf courses, hotels, sports, campus, restaurants, and retail, as well as its own nature reserve and a white sand beach, even their own on site farm. If you like this type of content, please hit subscribe. You can find my contact details and those of the logo in the show notes. So let's get into it. Here's CEO Sean Moriarty.
Sean, thanks so much for joining me today. It's a real pleasure. There's so much we could talk about, you've got a huge project and a huge remit. Today we're going to focus on more the green, health and wellness aspects but perhaps just for those who aren't familiar with kin to the logo, just a very brief introduction to the project and its various components.
sean 1:41
Yeah, good morning. And thanks. Thank you for inviting me. It's, it's great to be joining you. So Kindred Lago is in the very south of Portugal, it's 12 minutes from from faraway airport. And we really are spoiled with nature here. It's 50 years old. Now Quinta do Lago was first founded. And it's changed a huge amount in in those 50 years. And I suppose in the last number of years, and some game changes for us was the campus. That's one of the latest inventions. We built new homes, but very much focusing on outdoor living, which is a huge part of Quinta do Lago - also safety, nature, outdoor living, a sense of community, and which was a big element of what the campus brought. So it's built on 2500 acres of land, we respect the greenbelt. So you can only build on 25% of the land. So, there's no high rising buildings, all the buildings are all built at the same height. It is an architectural dream world because they can have different styles. But it's, everything's built at the same height. Everybody's got big gardens, you know, it looks, it looks very good.
Matt Morley 3:10
So just to put that in perspective, essentially, it is a residential community, first and foremost. But then you also have the golf and you have the hotel component. So you're open to the public but you also have those who invest by and live on site for at least part of the year.
sean 3:30
Exactly. So it's residential, it is a big part of our resort here. So you've got a number of villas, mainly villas, and then you've got some condominiums which would have mixture of townhouses and apartments. So as over the last number of years, and now in particular, during COVID. We're seeing residents living down here more often, and for longer periods of time. But Quinta do Lago is open for tourism, we get a lot of passing through traffic, but it's, you know, it's from generations of all right now we're seeing some amazing things here of three generations of people that are quarantining at Quinta do Lago. So the age profile is very much changing over the last 18 months or 24 months.
Matt Morley 4:24
Getting younger?
Unknown Speaker 4:25
Younger, younger. So, you know, if you go back maybe six years ago, the average age of our real estate buyer was in the late 60s, late 60s, probably even early 70s. Now it's mid 40s for 85% for buyers.
Matt Morley 4:43
I think that's one of the things that really interests me most is just how, obviously, the project's got 50 years of history behind it, but it does seem to now just be hitting this crest of a wave right which is suddenly a turn to Healthy Living - health has become the new wealth. And it feels like you are neatly positioned to capitalize on that. But clearly, it wasn't the case, necessarily, as I understand it 50 years ago, right? So I mean are you seeing the effects of that yourself?
sean 5:15
you know, you see a lot of marketing throughout the world of trying to get in on the buzz of, you know, it's a healthy place to be and invest in your wellness and this kind of stuff. Quinta do Lago is situated on the national park, which is an amazing place, if you haven't been there, you need to take a walk or cycle along, it really is mind blowing. so Quinta has probably been saying this for a long, long time - it's the kind of environment that it is low density, you know, clean air. And now it's really become more important over the last two years, and in particular, in the past 12 months for, for the reasons that we know, but it really is top of mind, I think for people, it's top of mind for younger generations, I think schools now in most parts of the world, you're in better parts of Europe, in particular, they're really getting behind the whole sustainability piece. My nine year old can have conversations with me about sustainability that I don't fully understand, I have to admit. And that's a great, great place to be.
Matt Morley 6:33
clearly, in one sense, there's wider external factors that are turning in your direction, but how have you, as a team, strategically had to respond to what's going on around over the last two years at what it's been a case of new packages, new facilities, how have you tweaked or adapted the offer?
sean 6:53
You know, we really want to be the leaders, we want to be leaders of change. And that's been a part of our journey for the last number of years. And that's why we invested so much in our resort. Over the last eight years, nine years, we've we've invested over 70 million in just a resort in in revamping it in various different things. And, you know, during this lockdown pandemic, we said, let's now take advantage of this time, and start on our golf courses. Our golf is a huge part of our business. And we've had the number one golf course in Europe for a number of years. But, you know, it's it's no longer about having great greens and clean bunkers, you also have to have really play a huge part in the environment. And we went on a heavy audit on on the machinery we're using on our resorts, in our golf courses, in particular water pumps, and the how accurate these guys were. And it was a surprise to us, to us huge improvements to be made. So that got us then on the movement of investing in our in our golf course, in particular, we're putting in 7 million into that at the moment. But you know, one of the big results out of that is and we've completely changed the water system that we've put in, we've redesigned or got help to redesign our pumps because they weren't efficient enough. And at the end of this we're going to be using 20 to 30% less water consumption per annum, which is massive in an area like this, where water is so important in the warm weather environment. So that you know that's that's one piece with hundreds of pieces I could speak to you about including our farms and everything else...
Matt Morley 8:40
you mentioned the onsite farm and that was going to be one of my questions... Is that more of a soft marketing piece? Or is it literally a functional working farm that contributes to the restaurant?
sean 9:02
Well, to be honest with you, we had that piece of land a number of years ago and we really wanted to get into we want to evolve our restaurants quite a bit. And to buy local is very important for us to buy local is actually harder than it seems even though we've got amazing fresh markets here. You know, I think there's still quite a bit of work to do in local, which I support by the way on local governments and and food safety controls of how they can help the local food market producer and the restaurant owners to get that traceability of food product from A to B, I think there's still quite a bit of work to do not and that will be a game changer for everybody when that happens. So, you know we found it hard to get certain types of vegetables, certain types of products. So we said let's use this piece of ground and grow Our own and it started from there, it then became a wishlist for the chef's, I want this and I need this, I can't get this anywhere. And it evolved from there, then we have another couple of acres land on the road that wasn't being used. We farmed that. And we've turned it into five acres of farm now for vegetables are grown, and we've got greenhouses in it. And it's To be honest, it's only right now, in the past couple of months, two years later, that i'm really seen the impact of this, we do a lot of takeaway food now on home delivery food for customers because of lockdown, and the colors of the different vegetables, the freshness of it. It's really amazing. Now we're going to expand quite a bit, I've got some exciting things happening this year but yeah, it's not something that we're making a lot of money out of. But it's it's bringing a huge change in our footprint, of course, but also the quality of service we're providing.
Matt Morley 11:05
You mentioned, your relationship with the wider community. And obviously, we talk now about community often in the same breath as sustainability and wellness. Just wondering if there are other things that you're doing or how else you're, you're engaging with the community? Has that been a piece of your your CSR plan from the beginning?
sean 11:30
Yeah, we've we've always had a great connection with the community here with the residents and guests that come in, we've got a quite a large database. You know, there's, we've got a lot of golf club members in the campus, you know, games like paddle it brings together people together, you've got various different groups. I think what really stood out very quickly here last year, when the pandemic started off, ourselves and the rest of the residents very quickly, within one week pull together at the very beginning to raise funds for the local hospital. And I think it took nine days, and there was a half a million donated to the local hospital to get some machinery that they really needed. And that how quick that pulled together was amazing. The residents just grabbed it, lead it, I didn't have to be very much involved, and got involved a few times. And it was just completed. And I was just looking at my WhatsApp groups lately, they're still talking on it, there's still pieces going on, that showed a sense of community, you know, whereas at times, it seems it's very transient here, people plugged in very fast. I spoke to seven or eight residents this week about a new restaurant, we're opening up and bounced a few names off them to get their feedback. Funnily enough, all seven of them had different opinions, it didn't make my life any easier. But you know, we do engage quite a bit.
Matt Morley 13:18
There's that interaction then with your key stakeholders, I'm just wondering within the context of sustainability in your efforts there. Because you have been putting out a lot of content recently around your new sort of eco strategy. And there's clearly a lot of thinking that's gone into that. Is that being driven, if you like by those residential stakeholders, or is that come from above, from from sort of the boardroom level?
sean 13:50
the main driver is probably from within, you know, it wasn't pushed upon us to say you should be doing this. the basics of sustainability is a given, you know, it's frowned upon if you're still talking about how are you getting rid of plastic? Like that's, that's like in retail in the 90s when we had some great customer service people going around saying they can really train your staff to be the best trained people ever. Really, how are you going to do that? I'll train them how to say hello, please and thank you. That's a given. You know, that's the basics - if you put out a plastic straw, it's just frowned upon, it can't happen. But we really need to take it way above and beyond that, food is one of the quickest and easiest ways for people to realize that what you're doing and why we're doing it and to do it and eventually we want to have Carbon menus that you understand the carbon footprint of the food that you have on that menu. Where does it come from? And I think it's eventually that's where we'd like to get to in one or two of our locations and explain if we look, you really love figs, figs are out of season now, so I had to get them from Brazil.
Matt Morley 15:20
you mentioned the campus. And that would be perhaps another example of where you really push the boundaries. So the question begs asking, again, did that come from demand from the market? Or did you just say, you know, what, we're not going to do a standard gym, we're gonna completely raise the bar on that and set a new standard for hotel and resort residential gyms.
sean 16:20
I think to be fair, our shareholder no matter what he does, it's not going to be standard, it has to be above that. And I think that's what the demand is, if we're going to maintain this leadership role of resorts , it's expected that it's going to be above and beyond what the norm would be. And, you know, today, we really wanted it to be a game changer when it came to the log of so the campus ideally, in our mindset, when we set it out, we wanted the campus to become a flight to destination, not just Portugal to be a flight to destination. It took two years to build. Our first teams, they came from Beijing, they came from the Premiership in the UK, they traveled from all over the world , PSG, with various different teams here, football teams, and they haven't been in Quinta do Lago before, a lot of those players have never been here. So they came here because of the campus. So and that's really what we wanted to wanted to do. But the important thing about the campuses, it's built to the standard for the elite athletes. our tagline is very clear, be elite, whatever your level. And so it's open for everybody. So you can train with the elite athletes at your side, we don't close off parts of it, you know, unless there's a big football team here, and they need some privacy. We've got all the machinery, all the techniques, and the coaches that will train an elite athlete, and it's open for everybody. So for residents and guests, you know, I use it every day, and I'm elite at my level, I'm not at somebody else's level. And that's what we want it to be. You know, it's it's, it's a we're a big believer in backing the underdog.
Matt Morley 18:29
clearly, the temptation with the gym is to say, Okay, we'll put in some hardwood flooring, with the mirrors on the walls, but some lighting in perhaps a plant in the corner, and then you get Technogym in and and they just kind of do the rest, right? They just fit it out with all that the usual gear and sell you lots of strength machinery. At some point, you said, okay, no, we're gonna do it differently. Did you then have to factor in the additional revenue streams around bringing in and attracting pro teams? Because there's a gap, right? There's a big step to go from your standard investment. Or was it a bit of a leap of faith that there was just demand out there, and that if you, if you build it, they will come?
sean 19:22
You know, we were lucky enough. We met a lot of contacts. And we were able to speak to some football teams and managers and ask them, you know, of places you go to where's the best. And we didn't want to know why it was the best. It's what was missing from it. And we ended up with a list of things that was missing. And that's what we went after is those things that was missing, because the rest of it would pull together. But if you have stuff that nobody else has, that's unique selling point Right. So the pitch was the biggest, probably a big game changer and a big investment, it's 95% natural grass and the rest of it is made up, we're the only one in Europe that you can hire that pitch from. But yet, that's the pitch that PSG will play on, the pitch Man City play on in their stadium, and they, everywhere else, they were going to have their camps didn't have that pitch to train up. And that was a huge investment compared to the normal pitch that we could have put in, a huge difference. But the difference if you've got a big game coming up the Champions League game coming up, you know, you'll get your stats off the pitch of how much water you're going to have on it, what's the role of the ball going to be the distance of it, what's the bounce is going to be, we can replicate that pitch in three days. And that's that was unique. So that's clearly was a decision, the hope that that would be a hugely important week, we believe that would be important. And that was what we were gambling on. And it has turned out that it is quite important for people.
Matt Morley 21:13
So there's in some cases where you make these interventions, and you make a bet on the being demand out there for it. And other times, clearly a large part of your your strategy is just to leave nature where it is and not intervene. You mentioned the low density strategy. How do you plan ahead in terms of leaving certain amounts untouched and encouraging people to connect with nature, because clearly, there's this big shift now towards that spending more time outside in the fresh air? You've obviously got commercial demands on the one side, but then the in the same sense, at the same time protecting your future by allowing enough nature to remain untouched. So how do you how do you juggle those two?
sean 21:56
Well, you know, there's, there's a master plan in place for almost 50 years now, since the since it was founded, of protecting that amount of greenbelt. And we've never moved from that. And in fact, we're extremely strict on it. So when people are building houses, buying plots, here, there's only a limited amount of plots left. And there's a huge demand , the buildability per plot is clearly marked out. that's your maximum. And it won't budge from that. And everybody in these areas, not us, architects, municipalities, designers, they're all clear about that. That will never change, we will never be going back to redesign the master plan to say, Can we have a bit of this greenbelt back or take a bit here, take a bit there.
Matt Morley 23:01
So your role clearly then is to is to steady the ship and guide it on that path because you sort of know where you're going to some extent, but then within that, obviously, there's lots of room to, to experiment and to do what you're doing, which is to innovate and create new products and services. So looking ahead to the next one to three years down the pipeline, what do you have coming up, like, what are your next new launches that you have coming?
sean 23:27
Well, my next immediate one, which is quite exciting, and then in a lot of places that might seem like a small thing for us, it's a big piece, it's expanding, continue to expand the farm we have, but we're going to build a bee farm. And we've got a number of guys that work for us that are very qualified in this field. So they're very excited to get into a new new project and a new role. And that's, I think, gonna be exciting for us. Like I see this as every customer that comes and rents a villa from us or stays in our hotel, we'll get a jar of honey leaving and it will be another unique piece of of Quinta do logo and the Algarve. We're going to continue to evolve the outdoor living, you know, you mentioned that and the whole health and wellness piece of it we're really starting to become comfortable with that and providing a good service on that. You know, we've got good golf, we've got good tennis, we're evolving our cycling routes. Right now we've got since you were here a couple years ago we've got a new nature trails, it's linking up different beaches and you're off the sand dune. It's amazing and you can see everything that's going on around you it's it's great when the tide is in and you've got all the boards around you and flamingos there. We're very much going to push out a lot. And you know, we're it's it's a lot a lot of things now is about packages, I think people like decisions to be made for more at least to be guided into, I'll take care of it. What do you want to do? You know, if you're coming, you're going to travel for the first time. You want clean living open spaces. What kind of foods do you like? What kind of exercise do you like? Right down to we will label the shelves on your fridge that there starts shelf, that's mom's shelf. This is the baby shelf of what you've told us and what feedback you've given us and pack it and plan out your entire week if you want to de stress and relax or you want a fusion and lots of activity. And already, we're getting lots of great feedback on that. So I think we're going to continue to expand on that. We will look at d more real estate. We're just looking at plans on that at the moment. But we're looking forward to getting people back here.
Matt Morley 26:09
You got plenty going on. It's impressive stuff. So thank you very much for your time.
sean 26:13
It's been great. Thank you, Matt.