The student housing pioneer who became 'better society' guru

The Herald Scotland

29-04-2025

Charlie MacGregor, the Netherlands-based businessman behind TSH, a B-corp certified brand which started out by creating a new model for student accommodation, is determined to use his company to, he said, create 'a shift in the needle'.
The Better Society Academy held in Glasgow's Merchant City this week is part of that effort, bringing together more than 30 leaders in the emerging 'new economy' to share ideas, forge partnerships, and accelerate climate action, as part of its Europe-wide masterclass series.
For MacGregor these events are about bringing people together to 'listen with both ears'. An advocate of the thought of Rutger Bregman, whose books, Humankind: A Hopeful History and Moral Ambition, are hopeful about the possibility of humans solving the world's problems, he believes in bringing people together to find answers.
The Glasgow programme of The Better Society Academy, titled 'Changemakers Leading the Way to Net Zero: Inspiring Stories of Collaboration and Impact', will feature leading figures in sustainability, business, design, and activism.
Among them are Anna Campbell-Jones, designer and presenter of BBC's Scotland's Home of the Year; climate activist Clover Hogan, plastic pollution campaigner Laura Young. Alison McRae, Senior Director, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and Ally Mitchell, founder of Ocean Plastic Pots.
Ahead of the event, first minister John Swinney, who will deliver a keynote speech, described tackling climate as 'intrinsic to the nation's success'.
The Better Society Academy (Image: TSH)
MacGregor, whose father built the first-ever student housing building in 1980 for the University of Edinburgh, began his own journey as property entrepreneur, when he purchased a small student accommodation company at the age of 25, which he sold 10 years later.
It was when he moved to the Netherlands and became aware of a student housing crisis in Europe that he saw the opportunity to create a new model. 'When I started The Student Hotel, I wanted to give students better because I saw that what they had before and I thought that was pretty bad and they deserved better as the next generation of our movers and shakers.'
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The approach was ground-breaking at the time, 2006. MacGregor, who didn't go to university himself, but left school at 16 and worked in building construction, recalled: 'Everybody told me in the beginning. Don't mix students with hotel customers. That's going to be dangerous. There's going to be old corporate men jumping on young students. And never mix your locals with business community of co-workers.
"But we have one open door. We bring everybody together and what I started to see what happened when you mix people together by bringing these different demographics together.
'Most student accommodation blocks are full of one demographic or one stereotype. 300 students without any adults there will behave like 300 students – just as you know the same when you take a group of guys to a football match, they believe behave like a group of guys at a football match.'
'What I saw was that by blending them together, you create a better society. We really believe that. We're social. We want that to be our main thrust.'
The Social Hub, Candleriggs, Glasgow (Image: TSH)
The TSH model of student accommodation, he described, brings enormous value to the neighbourhoods in which it is built.
'We're four times more valuable for a city than a standalone hotel," he said. "That's four times more social and economic value. We're still working it out for students accommodation and I think it's going to be 8 to 10 times more valuable than the than a standalone student accommodation. We've got real data to show what the social, the regeneration value that we bring to a city is."
The idea behind both TSH and the Better Society Academy is to bring people together in order to try to understand each other's point of view. 'It's a space,' said MacGregor, 'where people can just hear and you can agree to disagree and it's totally fine. And I think we've forgotten a little bit in society that it's OK to disagree.'
'In today's society, we like to pigeonhole ourselves. We like to say you're left. You're right. You're pro. You're anti. And even if I look at myself I don't want to be left or right. I'm kind of in the middle, and even if you're there then you'll be attacked from both sides.'
What he hopes is that the big investors which have shares in TSH, but also in so many of the planet's companies, will start to say, 'Look, we've got this little company in Holland and they gave away 1% and they drive 5% of their revenues.'
'If I can really show," he said, "these other businesses that by being social, by welcoming the neighbours, and hosting Better Society Academies, by being a better corporation for my local neighbourhood, that is driving my bottom line, then I will start to move the needle.'
MacGregor is also co-founder of the refugee support NGO, Movement On The Ground - and his sense of social purpose came out of the response he had to the global refugee crisis in 2015.
Charlie MacGregor, entrepreneur behind The Social Hub and The Better Society Academy (Image: Rachel Ecclestone)
At the time, he had three hotels in Holland and he called a government minister to say that he had 1500 rooms and could take refugees, and started to take them in. 'Then we started collecting clothes and I was nervous of what the neighbours would say. I was collecting clothes for refugees.'
But what hit him most was seeing the shocking image of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian refugee toddler washed up dead on a beach in Turkey. 'I was sitting on my bed at the time, putting my socks on and I saw his image burst out crying. My son, my youngest son, who was the same age as him, walked into the room and said, 'Hey Daddy, what's going on? He had never seen me cry like that before. And I picked him up and I was so grateful that my son was here and I was alive, that I decided I'm doing the wrong stuff. I want to do more.'
With a good friend, he went out to Lesbos to help, and two weeks later he was 'in the sea helping people get off a boat and onto land and making sandwiches for 1000 people',
'I guess at the moment,' he said, 'when I got off my CEO pedestal, the moment that I stopped holding meetings and started doing something myself, it put in place the piece of the jigsaw that hadn't been there previously. I came back and I I felt much more comfortable getting involved. It also seemed that everybody wanted to help us. Everybody that I spoke to from businesses to banks to investors to customers to locals, everybody was excited about what we were doing there. That kind of changed me that that gave me more guts to put my heart on my sleeve.'
'Changemakers Leading the Way to Net Zero' is at The Social Hub in Glasgow's Merchant City from April 29 till May 2