Hamilton Cottages Isle of Arran

29/06/2025

School holidays have started in Scotland (well apart from Arran where kids have to go back tomorrow from 9-1pm 🤦🤷😆) but that means one thing at Hamilton Cottages.... The games room is a-go-go!!!

⚽Perfect for family fun of all ages the games room has a pool table, table tennis, table football and giant connect 4.

It's a great space to use up a bit of spare energy and get competitive🏓

20/06/2025

This absolute belter sums up why we don't take part in any industry awards 😂

For most industry awards you have to:

👉 nominate yourself
💰 then pay to attend the event
💰 then pay to use the award that you've 'won' in any of your promotional material.

🤝Often big businesses will 'buy a table' at industry awards events and then invite along people they'd like to keep sweet eg brand reps, influencers, suppliers etc.

🏆I do understand why businesses enter them though. Put a 'gold medal winner'🥇 sticker on a bottle of wine and 100% I'm getting sucked into buying that bottle over the one that doesn't have a sticker!! 😆 So awards =sales, even if the award = nonsense!!

Anyhoo, this Calmac one gave us a right chuckle after a week of incomprehensible messaging from them about bookings but I'm sure there are some genuinely really good award schemes out there, feel free nominate us if you find one.😆😜

🎉 We’ve won! 🎉

CalMac is proud to have taken home the ‘Excellence in Travel Information and Marketing’ award at the Scottish Transport Awards last night in Glasgow! 🏆

Our winning campaign, ‘Every Journey Starts a Story’, was up against some tough competition from Transform Scotland, Stagecoach, Edinburgh Trams and First Bus – so this recognition means the world to us.

📺 The campaign featured TV, outdoor, press and digital adverts – all created using real photos and videos from our amazing customers and delivered some fantastic results:
✅ Bookings up by 5.8%
✅ Brand reputation improved by 21.4%
✅ Brand knowledge in Scotland rose by 19.9%

This award follows our recent Bronze win at the Marketing Society STAR Awards in the Advertising category.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed, supported, and shared their stories with us. 💙

12/06/2025

🔥We are so excited to introduce our new wood fired sauna!!

🌡️Perfect for relaxing after a day exploring or to sooth those muscles after climbing Goatfell ⛰️

💦 Combine with a dip in our natural plunge pool in our woodland stream for some hot and cold therapy, or just do as I did this evening and stand in the rain for a few minutes in between sessions 🌧️!!!

Our sauna is now exclusively available for all guests at Hamilton Cottages to use.

Our thanks again to Aria for the funding to help with this project

11/06/2025

If you're looking for big portions of classic pub food 🍔where kids/dogs/sweaty runners/mucky walkers/ soggy sailors etc are all welcome you can't beat the Ormidale!

10/06/2025

Arran Rocks 🪨

A six-day hike on Arran – a new Unesco Geopark – reveals tales of dinosaurs, tectonic plate collisions and lightning strikes from millions of years ago

08/06/2025

Some snaps from a wee impromptu cottage photoshoot on Friday that all started because I had a loaf of bread that looked photogenic 😆(👉swipe through to see if artfully positioned in Rosa kitchen!) and because I'm absolutely brilliant at coming up with jobs that get me out of the jobs that I should be doing like the mahoosive pile of ironing 🤣

07/06/2025

🍴Fancy a free dinner? 😜 We know many of our guests love nature🌿 so why not book a foraging trip while you're here? With the bonus of free snacks 😋😁

07/06/2025

🏔️🏃‍♀️Last chance to join this iconic mountain race, back after a long hiatus!! And we have accommodation available if you want to make a weekend of it😀🧳🚢

Last call for entries for the Glen Rosa horseshoe race next Saturday.

Entries close tomorrow

Still a few spaces left now that we can take 150

https://www.sientries.co.uk/event.php?elid=Y&event_id=14947

04/06/2025

Fancy learning about our lump of rock?!

02/06/2025

⭐Some of our recent 5 star reviews from our lovely guests⭐

We've been getting lots of positive feedback on our location recently which is lovely as it's not something we can do much about 😆 but we've been saying 'west is best!' since we moved here and it's brilliant to see other people agreeing with us and realizing that Arran isn't just Brodick and Lamlash, there's so much more!!! (Although we do love you Brodick and Lamlash, don't worry!)

We absolutely ♥️ love our location as we're so central for reaching all of the island which is great if you're only here for a few days and want to see as much as possible and we're not looking back at the Ayrshire coast so no light pollution to ruin the sky at night ✨ or memories that normal life is 'just over the water' 👔🚫 🤣 We are truly 'away from it all' but within 15 mins drive of Brodick and only 5 mins to Blackwaterfoot with it's beautiful harbour 🚤, stunning beach ⛱️ (best on the island!!) , Golf course ⛳, shops 🛍️ and pub 🍻

What's not to love?! 😁♥️

27/05/2025

We have a ♥️love/hate❌ relationship with Airbnb!

♥️We love them as they totally give us the 'searchability' that we just can't get from our own website direct and people do get a feeling of security by booking through a well known name but the FEES! OMG! They are A LOT! 😱

💰Our small business unfortunately just cannot absorb the full amount so they do get passed directly on to the consumer. Yes, for those fees you get 'AirCover' insurance which will give peace of mind but it won't cover you for every eventuality so you'll likely still need to buy travel insurance anyway (Something many people don't do for UK holidays for some reason? )

Airbnb do make it hard to communicate with our guests sometimes as well. They don't like anything that takes you 'off platform' so we can't give any links to our direct website or to any other sites that might be useful when people sometimes ask us for info. We can't even say things like 'search for this website' the messages just get instantly blocked by their bots 🤖

BUT we can't argue with their marketing spend 💰💲and the sheer number of eyeballs 👀they manage to pull on to their site so they're clearly doing something very well!!

🧳When we are booking our own holidays we totally use big sites like Airbnb and Booking.com to help us find places but then always try and find the place directly by just searching the name of the property if it's given or use tools like Google image search to find the same properties on other sites and then we can see where it's cheapest!

🍕'Cos I'll happily spend the £259 eating and drinking 🍷 out more 😍 and visiting attractions that will help the local economy rather than giving it to Airbnb!