The Fife Arms
The Fife Arms has stood at the heart of Braemar since 1856. When Queen Victoria bought Balmoral Castle, around ten miles away, she made the Highlands fashionable and brought the village to the world’s attention, changing horses at the inn on her excursions along the River Dee.
Iwan and Manuela Wirth’s vision was to restore that spirit and tell Braemar’s story through art. The hotel holds a collection of 14,000 works of art and antiques, many specially commissioned and displayed throughout the building, so that every room and corridor carries part of the story of the place. This is what sets The Fife Arms apart. It is a hotel that could exist nowhere else, and one that draws guests from around the world in its own right. As Iwan Wirth puts it, “We often say that Braemar is the most famous village in the world. It has this extraordinary history, and it is this spirit that has inspired our restoration of the Fife Arms.”
Our strategy
A hotel this distinctive called for a commercial strategy to match, and the strategy was ours alone. We chose to lead the market, not follow it, and measured The Fife Arms against the best hotels in the world instead of its local competition. That shaped a pricing model exceptionally different from anything else in the area.
Distribution was direct from the start. We accepted no online travel agencies and worked only with travel agents. Ahead of the 2018 opening, we appointed the hotel’s PR agencies in each key feeder market, and launched with strong PR, marketing and sales working together. Today the UK, the USA and France are the hotel’s top three feeder markets, with international demand all year round.