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Family behind luxury Speyside hotel on international booking boom

The hotel features a high-end restaurant as well as two bars and employs 35 staff.

The Dowans Hotel in Aberlour. Image: The Dowans Hotel
The Dowans Hotel in Aberlour. Image: The Dowans Hotel

The owner of a luxury Speyside hotel is expecting a exceptionally busy year due to a jump in international bookings.

The Dowans Hotel in Aberlour has been owned and run by the Murray family for the past 13 years.

Lauren Murray is part of the family at the helm and is hoping to build on a “very busy” 2024 for the Victorian mansion.

After the acquisition in 2012 the owners undertook a major refurbishment of the hotel, which now offers 16 en-suite rooms as well as its own restaurant and two bars.

‘I’m just hoping the weather is good’

Lauren has seen a boom in bookings by visitors from both in the UK and abroad despite challenges in the hospitality sector.

The hotel has seen interest from the North American and European markets picking up pace in recent months.

She said: “2024 was very busy for us, and we expect that 2025 will be an equally good year.

“We’re getting a lot of bookings from across the UK this year, which is fantastic.

“We’re seeing a lot more staycationers coming back as people watch their pennies.

“We also have guests coming in from all over the world, and we’re starting to see more bookings coming in from our international guests.

Steph and Lauren Murray run The Dowans Hotel in Aberlour. Image: Jason Hedges/DC Thomson

“I’m very excited for it – I’m just hoping the weather is good.”

The Murray family also owns Hotel 1881 in Archiestown and Lauren said Speyside hospitality is “looking fairly strong” for the upcoming year.

She added: “We are so lucky with the community that we have here in Speyside, and we all work so closely together.

“There is so much that we can all do together, and we have such an eclectic offering.

“It means that then when people are coming to the area, there is something for everybody.”

The Aberlour hotel has 35 staff and has a high-end restaurant named 57 and two bars called The Still, which features more than 650 single malt whiskies, and MBar, which offers products from local breweries.

The Dowans Hotel part of ‘best-kept secret’

Lauren hasn’t ruled out expanding the Shawfern Group portfolio, the family’s company which owns the hotel.

Despite not originally being from Speyside, she said: “As soon as we arrived into the area, each one of us said, this is it for us, we’ve found it.

“We moved in on December 18 2012 and we’ve never looked back.

Inside one of the bars at The Dowans Hotel. Image: The Dowans Hotel

“There’s so much that our region can offer – we’ve become a best-kept secret, but we’re not actually a secret.

“I’m extremely passionate, and I love it here – I can’t imagine doing this anywhere else.

“Things are not always easy, but we’re all still as passionate about it as we have always been, and we want to succeed. I don’t see us slowing down anytime soon.”

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