An island beer maker is to open a brewery, hotel and visitor centre on the mainland.
Isle of Arran Brewery says it hopes to attract 30,000 visitors to its new site near Loch Earn, Perthshire in its first year of being open and wants it to complement its popular visitor centre in Brodick on the west of Scotland island the company is named after.
The centre in the village of St Fillans will cost at least £250,000, with around 20 jobs created once the former Drummond Hotel is converted, the brewery said.
Due to open at the start of next summer, the site will have three restaurants, two bars and a shop, and the hotel will accommodate 30 guests.
The island brewery opened in 2000 and the visitor centre in Brodick attracts around 20,000 visitors a year.
Managing director Gerald Michaluk said: "The St Fillans site offers the brewery the chance to diversify and expand, producing a range of fresh and exciting brews in a new region of Scotland. The new premises will be situated on a stunning site overlooking Loch Earn and we hope to add to the magic of St Fillans with some island charm."
The company bought Rosebank Distillery near Falkirk last year as part of expansion plans. The deeds of the site say it cannot be used for distilling until 2017 when a "micro-distillery" could be opened.
The St Fillans project is part-financed by VisitScotland and Bank of Scotland to promote tourism before major events next year such as the Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup.
The 15 million tourists who visited Scotland last year contributed £5.2 billion to the economy, according to VisitScotland.
Advisers from Bank of Scotland are working with a group of small tourism businesses to help them grow and attract more visitors next year.
Amanda Harold, relationship director at the bank, said: "Our new tourism partnership initiative will help build on the strong support we already provide businesses in the tourism sector, such as Isle of Arran Brewery, by ensuring that we have a clearer understanding of the unique opportunities and challenges facing small tourism providers.
"This expert knowledge will enable our new specialist team to provide these businesses with the vital day-to-day support they need to grow and expand."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article