Start Small, Start Now: Magaly Etter on Building a Regenerative Hotel

Magaly Etter didn't come from a sustainability background. She spent her career in hotel operations — Switzerland, then twelve years across Bath and the North Cotswolds — before joining Whatley Manor as guest services manager almost six years ago. She moved into the ESG role for a better work-life balance, in what might be the most understated career pivot in this episode.

What she inherited, and now runs, is genuinely comprehensive: every bedroom amenity, every cocktail garnish, every laundry contract has been reconsidered since the hotel started its sustainability journey in 2019. The hotel is certified through EarthCheck, an Australian third-party certification body, and tracks its carbon footprint through a French platform called Greenly — connected directly to the accounting system, so every purchase is accounted for, down to the exact kilos of tomatoes bought from a single supplier. That level of detail exists because suppliers account for 98% of Whatley Manor's emissions — which is where most of the real work now happens.

The building itself is the recurring obstacle. Grade II listed, single glazed in places, and repeatedly turned down for solar panels — once because guests might see them from the spa roof, on land where a solar farm nearby would be visible from the property anyway. The current plan is air source heat pumps, aiming to take the hotel off fossil fuels entirely by 2028, still subject to planning.

The origin story is small and human: the owner, also Swiss, was introduced to a sustainability consultancy through someone he knew personally, and the hotel's general manager at the time was openly skeptical — "that's not gonna work, us being a luxury hotel and doing sustainability" — before becoming the driving force behind it. Whatley Manor is now cited within its own hotel group, Pride of Britain Hotels, as one of the UK's sustainability leaders in hospitality, and other properties have followed its lead into EarthCheck certification, including at least one director who once questioned out loud whether a sustainability role was even necessary.

Magaly is candid that none of this scales to personal perfection, either for a business or a person. She has two young children and tries to teach them not to waste water or litter, while accepting she can't get everything right. Her practical answer, for hotels and households alike, is the same: start small, do something rather than nothing, and don't try to build the framework from scratch when certification bodies and free tools already exist to help.