Hotel Getaways in Aberdeenshire

The Fife Arms is unlike any other hotel in Scotland. It was built in 1856 as a coaching inn in the middle of Braemar, and Queen Victoria used to change horses here on the way to Balmoral. The art dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth bought it in 2014, spent four years restoring it and filled it with more than 16,000 works of art. There’s a Picasso among them.

It has 47 rooms and suites, every one different. You can eat in The Clunie, where the cooking is done over an open fire, or in The Flying Stag, which is the village pub. Bertie’s Whisky Bar holds more than 500 whiskies. Braemar Castle is a short walk from the door, and Balmoral is ten miles down the road.

Visit The Fife Arms

Douneside was the home of the MacRobert family. Sir Alexander MacRobert bought the estate in 1888, and Lady MacRobert laid out its gardens. She lost all three of her sons, two of them in the air in the Second World War, and she left the house to the charitable trust she founded. The trust still owns and runs it, and the house reopened after a great refurbishment in 2016.

There are ten bedrooms in the house, with cottages and apartments in the grounds. The restaurant holds three AA Rosettes and takes its vegetables, fruit and herbs from the walled kitchen garden. Guests can use the health club, which has an indoor pool. The 17 acres of gardens, with their terraces and long lawn, are a pleasure to walk round.

Visit Douneside House

Banchory Lodge is at the foot of Dee Street in Banchory, close to the river. It’s a four-star hotel with 28 bedrooms, each styled on its own, and some of them welcome dogs.

The restaurant and bar cook from local produce through the seasons. Crathes Castle, a 16th-century tower house with painted ceilings and a walled garden, is a few miles to the east.

More about Banchory Lodge

Maryculter House has one of the oldest stories in the valley. The Knights Templar founded a house here on the bank of the Dee in 1225, and the hotel has grown up on the same spot. It’s fifteen minutes from the middle of Aberdeen.

There are 40 bedrooms, and the restaurant, Poachers’, looks out over the water. The hotel can arrange salmon fishing on the Dee.

More about Maryculter House

North of Aberdeen, away from the Dee, Meldrum House stands in 240 acres on the edge of Oldmeldrum. The barony goes back to 1236, and the old tower house is still at the heart of the building, though most of what you see was designed by the Aberdeen architect Archibald Simpson in 1836.

The hotel has rooms in the manor house, the stables and a newer building in the grounds, and its own golf course. The Cave Bar, in the oldest part of the house, keeps more than 120 whiskies. Glen Garioch Distillery, founded in 1797, is in the village, and Fyvie Castle and Haddo House are both under ten miles away.

Visit Meldrum House

If you would rather have a house to yourselves, with the comfort of a hotel, there are two on Deeside that we love. Faunoran is a granite house of steep slate gables in Crathie, a few minutes’ walk from the gates of Balmoral, in a wood of silver birch where pheasants wander across the lawn. It opened to guests in April 2026.

There are five en-suite bedrooms, some with their old stone fireplaces, a lounge gathered round a painted fireplace and a kitchen built for cooking for ten. Behind the house, a long terrace looks over a still pond.

More about Faunoran House