Scotland has some of the finest hotels and places to stay in the world. There are a vast array available to cater for all budgets, from the luxurious Gleneagles Hotel through to the cosy Rowan Tree in Aviemore. In this feature we offer just a glimpse of some of the best and most stylish that modern Scotland has to offer.

Sitting Comfortably
The great British winter is well under way now and the end of the year is in sight. But picture this: you come in from the cold and a great log fire is roaring in the grate, someone takes your coat while someone else fixes your favourite aperitif. The smell of a delicious dinner is wafting from the kitchen while upstairs your enormous soft bed is being turned down for the night and plans are already afoot to bring you your breakfast in the morning. Yes, maybe it’s time to crush those winter blues with a break at one of Scotland’s more sumptuous hotels.

Award-Winning Scottish Hotels
Scotland is now filled with hotels that are winning award after award. Restaurants are achieving the once elusive Michelin stars. Scotland really is a place that offers a stylish venue for every occasion. So, where do you begin?

Near Fort William is Inverlochy Castle Hotel. The readers of Travel and Leisure Magazine voted Inverlochy ‘Best Hotel in Europe’ 2006. The castle itself was built in 1863 and a few years later Queen Victoria stayed for a week. The Queen, a lover and connoisseur of all things Scottish, said that she ‘had never seen a lovelier or more romantic spot’ and over a century later, little has changed. Well, nowadays the hotel’s rooms have flat screen televisions, direct dial telephones, wireless internet access and twenty-four-hour room service. The incredible, dramatic views across Ben Nevis (the UK’s highest mountain) are the same as they were when Queen Victoria sketched and painted them over a hundred years ago.

Click here to download a brochure of Inverlochy Castle Hotel.

Over in Edinburgh the Town House Company operates four of the city’s most upmarket hotels, all of which have won plaudits and accolades. Channings was awarded ‘Edinburgh Hotel of the year 2004’ by Hotel Review Scotland, an online guide to hotels in Scotland.

This year The Bonham in the West End won ‘Scottish Boutique Hotel of the Year’. The Edinburgh Residence is a collection of 21 luxury townhouse suites on Rothesay Terrace, (which has been described as ‘Edinburgh’s most fashionable address’) and The Howard is a five star Georgian retreat which offers a ‘your butler’ service, individual attention right down to polishing your shoes or organising your social life! Readers should also look out for the new Town House development of Blythswood Square Hotel, in Glasgow opening 2008.

Perfect To A Tee
For the golfers among you, Skibo Castle in Sutherland gained international fame a few years ago when it was the venue for the wedding of Madonna and Guy Ritchie, but the castle had long been used to illustrious visitors. Billionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie – the son of a Dunfermline weaver who crossed the Atlantic when he was 13 and who was the ‘Steel King of America’ by the time he was 30 – bought Skibo in 1897 for £85,000. He then spent a further two million pounds – a staggering sum at the time – on extensive renovations, turning the 200 acre estate into what has been described as ‘heaven on earth.’

Carnegie’s lavish hospitality was legendary and his parties would regularly see figures like John D Rockefeller, Lloyd George, Rudyard Kipling and King Edward VII enjoying the comforts of Skibo. These comforts were administered by a permanent staff of 85 servants and over 20 gardeners and no detail was overlooked – right down to employing two ‘walkers’: men whose sole job was to walk the estate’s roads, tramping down the gravel to ensure a smooth ride for guests being taken for a spin in one of Carnegie’s 17 automobiles!

While the ‘walkers’ are long gone, the Carnegie ethos of total luxury and attention to detail persists to this day at the Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle, one of the most prestigious, exclusive private members golf clubs in the world. The new clubhouse was opened in 2004 and - at a cost of over two million pounds - is one of the most luxurious in the world: a vaulted space with Scottish oak beams spanning an extended bar and large sitting and dining areas is encased in floor-to-ceiling windows offering breathtaking views across the estate.

The golf course itself is of such quality that former Open champion Greg Norman was moved to remark ‘there is nothing better in life than a dream come true – Skibo Castle is definitely that dream.’

When talk turns to golf it is impossible not to mention St. Andrews. The Old Course has hosted 27 Open championships – more than any other golf course – and the Old Course Hotel’s bars, restaurants and bedrooms have played host to every great golfer who has ever swung a club. Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods: all of them have munched sandwiches and sipped drinks in the hotel before striding out to face what is still – over six hundred years after golf was first played here – one of the toughest challenges in the sport. ‘To win at St. Andrews is the ultimate’, as Tiger has said.

But the truly remarkable thing about the Old Course is that, ever since the local council acquired the links in 1894, it has remained a public golf course. Anyone with a handicap below 24 can play here, making it almost unique amongst the world’s great courses. Perhaps even more remarkable is that, in an age when a round of golf at a prestigious private club can now cost upwards of two hundred pounds, a game at St. Andrews is still just £59.00. The hotel’s a little more expensive however . . .

Gleneagles in Perthshire is another one of the world’s great golf institutions. The 266 room hotel was designed along the lines of a great French château and opened its doors in 1924. The Gleneagles estate encompasses 859 acres and three golf courses, including the Jack Nicklaus designed PGA Centenary course. Opened in 1993 and costing £5.9 million, the Centenary will be the course which is used when the Ryder Cup comes to Gleneagles in 2014. Extensive renovations to the hotel and golf course are already underway for this event, arguably the most prestigious jewel in the golfing calendar. Not that Gleneagles is unused to hosting prestigious events – all the world’s political leaders gathered here for the G8 summit in the summer of 2005 and the levels of food, facilities and comfort here are on a par with anything man has yet devised. The restaurant is run by renowned Scottish Chef of the year, Andrew Fairlie. He creates signature dishes in his intimate, two Michelin-starred restaurant, where every detail has been carefully planned to create a truly special experience. From the leather of the menus and innovative original art on the walls through to the specially selected French cheeses and Scottish-grown herbs, the experience is truly world class. As Andrew received much of his chef's training in the South West of France with Michel Guérard, the cuisine is unashamedly French but with a Scottish twist.

Many of the ingredients for Andrew's gourmet menu come from the famous Rungis market outside Paris as well as from local Scottish suppliers.

Click here for menus from Andrew Fairlie @ Gleneagles restaurant.

The centrepiece is Andrew's signature dish 'Smoked Lobster', which involves smoking lobster shells over old whisky barrels for up to twelve hours. Other delicacies on offer include Roast Anjou Squab with Black Truffle Gnocchi and a tempting Hot Chocolate Biscuit dessert.

In his diaries the late Alan Clark – a man famously used to the good life - described Gleneagles as ‘heavenly.’

A Cosy Retreat
There are many hotels in Scotland where you really don’t have to spend a small fortune to enjoy comfort and good food. The Rowan Tree, on the banks of Loch Alvie, near Aviemore is a good example. Built in the 1700’s this coaching inn is one of the oldest hostelries in the Spey Valley.

Tastefully modernised and upgraded in the early nineties it has twelve beautiful bedrooms, and no two rooms are exactly alike, with bedroom no 5, with its incredible views over the Loch, perhaps having the edge. In the restaurant wonderful local produce is used to great effect and you can enjoy dishes like beef in Cairngorms Ale, Daube of Venison and a wide range of Scottish cheeses. On a Winter’s night, there are few better places to be in the world than inside the cosy warmth of The Rowan Tree.

Cromlix House near Stirling is a product of the Victorian era (which was responsible for so much of Scotland’s splendid architecture). Originally built as a family residence, today the beautiful sandstone exterior houses fourteen bedrooms (eight of them vast suites) and an elegant world of wood-panelling, log-fires and inviting armchairs, while Michelin-starred chef Steven MacCallum creates wonderful dishes with fresh local produce. Although Cromlix was built during Queen Victoria’s reign it was her successor King Edward VII who became the hotel’s first royal guest, when he visited the hotel in 1908.

Another handsome Victorian mansion is to be found further south, in Robert Burns’s land of Ayrshire. Glenapp Castle in Ballantrae was built in 1870, but by the 1990’s it had fallen into complete disrepair when it was taken over by husband and wife Graham and Fay Cowan. The couple moved into the thirty acre estate in 1994 and embarked upon a renovation programme which was to last six years. When Glenapp was finally launched as a hotel in 2000 the results were spectacular: seventeen bedrooms, some of them enormous, all of them with stunning period features, and elegant, tastefully furnished public rooms connected by what feels like miles of oak panelled corridors, transport the visitor back a hundred years.

City Bound
Moving into Glasgow, a half-hour-drive north of Ayrshire, brings us to One Devonshire Gardens, one of the ‘great hotels of the world’ (Condé Nast Traveller) and one of the first ‘boutique’ hotels now so popular all over the world.

One Devonshire – now part of the Hotel du Vin group - originally opened its doors in 1986 and was the brainchild of legendary Glasgow hotel, restaurant and nightclub mogul Ron McCulloch. The hotel is discreetly spread across several connected Victorian townhouses in a leafy crescent in the city’s West End and has 35 bedrooms; all with sumptuous beds, beautiful Egyptian linen and powerful showers. The hotel’s most extravagant suite, the Mews, is a self-contained duplex with two bedrooms, two lounges, a dining area, two bathrooms, Jacuzzi, sauna and gym equipment. Previous guests have included George Clooney, Neil Diamond, Robbie Williams, Britney Spears and Pavarotti and it’s probably safe to say that over the years One Devonshire Gardens has seen more stars than the Hubble Telescope!

More affordable luxury in Glasgow’s city centre can be found at the delightfully bijou Brunswick Hotel in the Merchant City. Located in a primavera building (winner of a 1995 Regeneration Architecture award) the Brunswick has trendy, funky rooms from upwards of £65 a night. Its café Brutti Ma Buonni (meaning ‘ugly but good’!) serves fresh, delicious food and the hotel has been used as a location for TV series like Taggart and The Book Club.

Click here for images of The Brunswick Hotel.

Scotland’s Finest
Scotland’s hotels have never looked finer. The amount of awards that are pouring into the country is outstanding and looks set to continue. Scotland has a reputation for unrivalled hospitality and is setting the benchmark for high quality customer service.

Luckily there are hundreds of wonderful hotels tucked away in every nook and cranny of the country, as diverse in character and style as Scotland itself – at a budget to suit everyone. However, there are qualities you’ll undoubtedly find wherever you go: roaring fires and warm hospitality, thoughtful, unobtrusive service, and delicious locally sourced food.

So, whether you’re looking for the countryside and dramatic weather-lashed scenery, or for the city and thronging shopping streets sparkling with festive lights, Christmas is a fabulous time to enjoy modern Scotland.

Further Information:

Courtesy of Scottish Government - Scotland.org .