At the end of 2012 Richards and his wife acquired the Idle Rocks hotel in St Mawes, Cornwall. After a multimillion-pound refurbishment the hotel reopened in the summer of 2013. It is now a Relais and Chateaux Hotel and in 2014 it was voted one of the 50 best beach hotels in Europe by the Sunday Time Travel Magazine. In 2018 it was awarded Britain's top Seafood Restaurant. Richards acquired a second hotel in the village in 2013, the St Mawes Hotel.