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I'm Ciaran Murray. I've spent over a decade on hotel and bar floors in Ireland, from five-star resorts to high-volume city bars, and in late November I move to the Scottish Highlands. More about me.
What this site is about
Highland hospitality, written from the floor up. The welcome is the region's greatest asset, and the people who give it face rotas, visas, housing, the visitor levy and the Budget. Each essay starts with a real place or a real night, makes one argument, and puts the sources at the foot so you can check them.
Three themes
- People & Craft: the staff, chefs, distillers and managers who make the welcome, and the craft of the floor.
- Economics & Policy: the visitor levy, short-term lets, VAT, budgets and the data behind them, argued fairly and dated.
- Heritage & Place: clan and Gaelic, the inn and the shooting lodge, the roads and the places, and what a Highland welcome has meant.
Begin with
- Who Will Pour the Dram? Staff, Visas and Highland Beds: why the Highlands' hardest hospitality question is no longer demand, but who will do the work and where they will live.
Coming in October:
- Mon 12: a night at the Highlands & Islands Thistle Awards in Inverness.
- Thu 15: how many visitors the Highlands actually gets.
- Mon 19: Glencoe, and the old law of hospitality.
- Thu 22: the Highland visitor levy, explained.
- Mon 26: a 10% VAT rate for hospitality, tested before the Budget.
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How I write
Every figure is referenced, I use the first person only for what I have seen or done, and corrections are dated. The details are in the editorial standards.