The owner of a new Scottish hotel group has said he would snap up a rundown former 17th-century coaching inn that was labelled a “carbuncle” if the price was right.
South African-born businessman Gareth Cotten said he shared the dismay of locals at the decline of Spean Bridge Hotel in Lochaber, which once housed a museum celebrating the area’s link to one of the finest Allied training centres in the Second World War at nearby Achnacarry.
Councillors, business leaders and residents say the hotel is damaging tourism in the scenic Highland village after years of under-investment and frequent changes in owner.
The hotel, on the A82 near Fort William, is thought to be owned by a Chinese travel firm and currently has a closed sign displayed although it is not for sale.
Official records show the company is behind in its accounts and faces being struck off.
Last year Mr Cotten acquired Spean Bridge’s only other hotel, the Aonach Mor, which had been closed for several years.
The Highland Bridge Hotel is his fourth since launching a new company, Hemisphere Hotels, in 2018, representing a seven-figure investment in Scotland’s hospitality trade.
“I have been very interested in that [Spean Bridge] hotel,” said Mr Cotten.
“In particular why it has not been run better.
READ MORE: Historic hotel now a 'carbuncle' damaging Highland tourism
“For me personally, I have a real penchant for older buildings. I want to see properties being used. I can’t stand the thought of empty properties.
“The first thing I would do is to fix it up and you could even do that on a piecemeal basis.
“You could close one wing entirely and fix up 40, 50 or 60% of the rooms.
"Then you use some of those funds to restore the other rooms that are in trouble.
“We are not a massive hotel, we’ve got eight rooms and it’s split into five and three and we literally threw the kitchen sink at getting the five rooms ready. Then our teams crashed in the other three rooms while we were renovating.
“You don’t have to try to fix the entire picture in one day because that is overwhelming, particularly for foreign owners.”
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The businessman said he doesn’t believe the owners are interested in selling but instead are choosing to run the hotel at a “ticking over” level and closing during the winter months.
“If it was reasonably priced, then I would absolutely look at it,” he said. “If you had two or three reasonably sized places in Spean Bridge you could become a bit of a hub.
“One of the reasons I picked Spean Bridge over Fort William was that it’s on the route if you are going to Skye.”
The hotelier, who lives in Spain, also owns The Folly in North Berwick, The Royal in Anstruther and another in Kyle and hopes to open a network of mid-price, three-star hotels across Scotland.
Local councillor and businessman Angus MacDonald, who opened Fort William’s first cinema in 15 years, said hospitality in the Highlands was facing a very difficult time at the moment.
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Mr Cotten added: “One of the reasons for opening in Spean Bridge is that we wanted to dip our toes into the ski market to see if we could have a 12-month hotel.
“We only really had snow worth talking about in the past three or four weeks.
“I’ve been operating in Scotland since 2018 and what I’ve noticed is the Easter to October season – with the staff and energy/heating struggles – that seems to be shrinking even more.
“We came across many Highlands operators last year who weren’t open by May and they were phoning us to send us guests because they couldn’t afford to open for three guests.
“It’s a very difficult environment to balance,” he said.
“One of the things we do to stand out is that we make sure we always have family rooms because people are sick and tired of having to book two double rooms.”
He said he’d noticed that travellers had become more demanding during the pandemic.
He said: “Room rates are expensive because they have to be and they [say] I could have got a four-star, all-inclusive resort for this. Our hotels in general maintain a very good reputation but speaking to other operators, they have all said how difficult domestic guests have been to please.”
Mr Cotten said he “runs his properties very lean” but staff are rewarded with lots of leave and guaranteed weekly days off which he said a lot of hotels “don’t do or can’t”.
He added: “I’d been involved with a chain of four-star backpackers in South Africa, which is quite unique. I came across our first property in North Berwick, we fixed it up and then picked up our second in 2020 before Covid struck and we survived that.
“The hope is to open a network of hotels in the Highlands.”
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