Pride of Britain welcomes three Scottish hotels

Pride of Britain Hotels has announced three new members to its now 51-strong luxury collection: the Fife Arms in Braemar, Fingal in Leith, Edinburgh, and Ness Walk in Inverness.

Two hotels have left the collection, Buckland Tout-Saints hotel in Devon and the Montagu Arms in Beaulieu, New Forest.

Peter Hancock, chief executive, Pride of Britain Hotels, said: “We are delighted to welcome three new Scottish members to the Pride of Britain collection of 50 hotels. All three properties are distinctly different and further strengthen our contingent of luxury Scottish establishments.”

Of the three new hotels, most notable is Fingal, which opened as a luxury floating hotel permanently berthed in the historic port of Leith. The accommodation comprises 23 luxury cabins, many with direct access to the decks.

The 22-bedroom Montagu Arms hotel in the New Forest has been confirmed as one of the hotels that will be leaving the group in August, which normally self-imposes a limit of 50 hotels.

As well as announcing the new members, the consortium has also unveiled research that reveals consumer confidence in the luxury end of the market is “buoyant”, with 51% guests saying they hoped to take a luxury UK hotel break in the next three months. Of guests surveyed, 80% said they would be happy to travel three hours or more for “that long-awaited, much-dreamt-of hotel stay”.

With the hotel industry poised to reopen to guests from 4 July, the research also found that customers rated extra cleaning measures to be key and 62% guests hoped to visit a Pride of Britain hotel within the next three months.

In terms of hotel interiors, 25% of those surveyed said they would like “as little visible change to normal (pre-Covid) operations as possible”.

Picture perfect: Art meets hospitality at Iwan and Manuela Wirth's Fife Arms >>