What an Orkney hotel actually is
Independent, characterful, and nothing like a chain
Set your expectations before you book, because Orkney hotels are not what the word conjures elsewhere. There are no chain properties on the islands and no five-star anything. Of the 198 places to stay we track across Orkney, only 17 are hotels or inns at all — the rest is overwhelmingly self-catering. What that leaves you with is a small set of independent, family- and locally-owned houses, several of them Victorian, most of them in Kirkwall or Stromness, and all of them running on their own terms.
That has real advantages. The bar of an Orkney hotel is frequently the best room in it — the Orkney beer is local, the whisky is from up the road, and the conversation is with people who live here. Several serve genuinely good food built on island beef, lamb and shellfish, and a hotel restaurant is often the answer to the eternal Orkney question of where is still serving at nine o'clock. If you want to be walked-in-distance from St Magnus Cathedral or the Stromness waterfront without renting a car, a hotel is usually the cleanest way to do it.
The trade-offs are equally real. Rooms in converted period buildings vary a lot within the same hotel, lifts are rare, and sound travels in old stone. Anyone chasing modern spa-hotel polish will be happier in a high-end self-catering cottage, which is where Orkney's best guest scores actually sit. Rates move with season and with the cruise calendar, so the live price on the property page is the only one worth planning around.
