A question of balance

One of the greatest challenges facing the Scottish hospitality industry is getting the balance right between all those quaint and traditional things that the overseas tourist visits the country for, and the demands of the modern traveller.

One of the greatest challenges facing the Scottish hospitality industry is getting the balance right between all those quaint and traditional things that the overseas tourist visits the country for, and the demands of the modern traveller.

It might be a sad reflection of the too fast, too numb modern world we live in when a travel company such as Scotland Calling is driven to offer laptop internet services to its passengers wherever they are in Scotland (see page 9), but the truth is that these days there are plenty who want to see lochs and glens AND know how the company's doing on Wall Street.

All this provides the hotelier with a dilemma: how do you keep the cuteness, the history, the unplanned and the quirky, but offer a fully functioning and hot power shower too? How do you provide a direct route back to Scotland's history, but offer high quality food flexibly and quickly at the same time? Scotland has come a long way in 30 years, but even today finding the best of both worlds isn't easy, particularly if you're travelling on a budget of any sort.

So it is a great deal of disquiet that we hear that the Craigellachie Hotel in Speyside has been sold and that change might be in the air.

The Craig, as it is affectionately known, sits on the banks of the Spey in the middle of Scotland's greatest mainland whiskymaking region between Aberdeen and Inverness, and it has established itself as the base camp for any whisky adventure.

It is a hotel that gets the Scottish balance ...

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• By : Dominic Roskrow
• In : Editor's View
• Issue : 19
• Page : 3
• Words : 684