Ready to find out all about Woodlands Glencoe?
We thought it was high time we gave you a proper introduction to the Woodlands Glencoe family, our history in the area and perhaps most importantly, why Woodlands is the way it is. So, settle in, it’s quite the story!
At Woodlands, we constantly strive not to offer average, run-of-the-mill accommodation. RiverBeds Luxury Wee Lodges, SeaBeds Luxury Lookouts and Forest Corner Luxury Hideaways aren’t just places to sleep; we like to think of them as a visual feast of slick architecture and stylish interiors, tucked into an eye-wateringly beautiful corner of the Highlands; but Woodlands isn’t really about buildings. It’s about the land, the people and a slightly obsessive desire to create something that feels different.
There are no grand hotel lobbies, anonymous corridors or performance of formality here. Instead, there are private stretches of Highland landscape, buildings designed to sit within it rather than simply on top of it and a team who know that sometimes the best thing you can do for a guest is give them a little space to simply breathe.
This carnival of luxury, hospitality and Highland eccentricity is orchestrated by four generations of the Woodlands Glencoe family. Us, the Youngs! We all live on and around the Woodlands Estate, along with a fair number of children, dogs, horses and hens, so we’re never particularly far from the action. We like to think that we’ve turned the business of hosting and hospitality into a 24/7 family fiesta. And, if little Caleb (6), Orla (3), Nathan (3), Robin (2) and Charlotte (2) have anything to do with it, it looks like the family business may be continuing for another generation yet!
Once upon a time in the 1970s…
The story really began in 1977, when Norman and Jessie Young (our grandparents) decided to take a rather enormous leap of faith! They sold their home in England, left behind the life they knew and borrowed everything they could to buy a hotel on the edge of Loch Linnhe. Norman’s mother even sold her home in Glasgow and threw her savings into the adventure.
The slightly important detail? None of them had ever worked in hospitality.
Norman was a well-regarded horticulturalist, essentially the man you called if you had any questions about growing tomatoes! While Jessie had been a journalist with the BBC in Bristol. They had no hospitality experience and no safety net. Just a belief that they could make it work. And somehow, they did!
What started with one small Highland hotel became the beginning of a family trade that has now stretched across four generations.
The hotel years
Their youngest son, Laurence, eventually joined them. Having studied hospitality, worked in hotel feasibility consultancy and qualified as a chartered accountant, he brought a rather useful mixture of skills to the family business. It was in Glencoe that he met Morag (our mum), a beautiful and talented hotel receptionist who would soon become his wife and business partner. Together, Laurence and Morag grew the business from one hotel into four renowned properties across the west Highlands, living and breathing the hotelier dream for more than three decades. And the five of us children grew up right in the middle of it.
We made beds, cleaned loos, scrubbed dishes in the hotel kitchen and generally got involved wherever we were needed. We saw the hard work and sacrifices that came with running a hospitality business, but we also saw something else: the magic of taking an idea, throwing everything you have at it and watching it become something real!
The land came first
In 2007, our parents sold the hotel group. They were ready to retire and, at the time, none of us five children seemed particularly keen on following them into hospitality. Two years later, they bought the golf course in front of their home. This wasn’t really a business decision. It was personal because our parents and grandparents lived on one side of the land, with aunties and cousins on the other. We had grown up climbing its trees, playing on its banks and swimming in its river long before anyone thought to call it Woodlands. We loved this place long before we owned it!
Unfortunately, they soon discovered that golf courses have a rather irritating habit of losing money rather than making it! So, they scratched their heads and started looking at ways to stem the flow of funds. Activities were the first step, joining forces with friends in the area to offer canyoning, RIB rides, Segway tours, archery and electric bike hire. And then Mum had a brilliant idea!
Starting at the river’s edge
The river that ran through the golf course had always been a bit of an annoyance. It cut the course in two, was heavily overgrown and for much of its journey through the estate, was barely visible. Morag looked at it and saw something entirely different! What if it wasn’t an obstacle? What if it was the most magical place on the estate to build accommodation?
The idea of developing another hotel was absolutely not on the agenda. After forty years in the hotel business, our parents were very firmly hotel’ed out. So the question became: what could we create that wasn’t another hotel? Something innovative. Something that made sense for modern lifestyles, but most importantly, something that would allow people to immerse themselves in the landscape rather than simply look at it from a bedroom window. The answer became RiverBeds Luxury Wee Lodges. Small, intimate luxury lodges, tucked into the riverbank. Each with its own private walkway, veranda overlooking the water and private hot tub.
Design as a way of caring
The luxury timber units were crafted off-site by a family business in Edinburgh, using sustainable techniques and some rather brilliant pieces of design ingenuity. And just like that, Woodlands as we know it began to take shape.
Design has always been a huge part of the Woodlands story. Mum is an interior designer and artist by trade, while James studied architecture at Newcastle University, so perhaps it was inevitable that our approach would be slightly design-obsessed! But for us, design isn’t simply about making something look beautiful. It’s about attention. Where the light falls. What a window can frame. How a building can give you privacy without cutting you off from the landscape. How a tiny detail can make a stay feel just that little bit more special.
The original RiverBed Luxury Wee Lodges, launched in 2015, proved that people really did want something different. So SeaBeds Luxury Lookouts followed! Larger lodges designed for couples and families, but still with that same sense of seclusion and connection to the land that made RiverBeds work in the first place.
Luckily, the “retirees” had five children…
By this point, three of the five children had decided that perhaps hospitality wasn’t such a bad idea after all! Growing up in hotels meant that Callum, James and Katie had lived and breathed the industry from a very young age. Today, each has taken a slightly different path, but all remain part of the wider Woodlands story.
James now leads Woodlands, with Mum and Dad still very much involved. Dad calls himself retired. Nobody quite believes him. Laurence has handed the reins to James but remains the person you call when the numbers need a second pair of eyes or when someone needs the benefit of several decades of hospitality experience.
Mum continues to shape the interiors and design decisions across the estate, while also working as a Scottish artist in her own right through My Scottish Artist, where she runs residential art workshops here on the estate.
Brother Callum, once Woodlands’ Operations Manager, has now set up his own media company, Great Glen Creative, helping capture the Highlands through photography and film, including quite a lot of the magic you see from Woodlands.
And sister Katie, who spent time leading Sales and Marketing at Woodlands, has branched out with her husband Brian to create intimate Highland weddings and elopements through Our Place Your Story. They regularly create a little extra magic for guests staying on the estate as part of their celebrations.
So while the Woodlands family business has evolved, the family bit remains very much intact.
Still a family business
Three generations of the family still live on and around the Woodlands Estate, alongside a fair number of children, dogs, horses and hens. And then there’s the wider Woodlands team (there’s over 40 team members now)! Many have grown up locally and have their own deep connection to this part of the Highlands. They’re the people who make the Woodlands experience what it is, often doing all the little things that guests might never see, but absolutely notice.
I recently asked Laurence what he thought was the secret to the success of Woodlands. “The team,” he replied, without hesitation. “We have always been surrounded by the most amazing workmates. It’s our colleagues who deliver exceptional service and add the magic that lets us thrive.” And we think he’s right as you can build beautiful lodges. You can design clever buildings. You can find an extraordinary piece of land, but the people are what bring it all to life.
The land isn’t the backdrop, it’s the reason
Woodlands doesn’t exist because we happened to find a magical piece of land to build on. It exists because of the land as it shapes the decisions we make every day, from where we site our lodges to how we plant, build and maintain the estate. We want to create extraordinary experiences for the people who visit us, but we also want the forest, the river and the wildlife here to still be thriving long after we’re gone. For us, looking after the land isn’t something separate from hospitality. It’s part of it. Read more about our approach to the land.
And here we are…
We’ve now been at Woodlands Glencoe for more than fifteen years and the business is still very much operated by the family. What started with a leap of faith in 1977 has somehow evolved into luxury lodges, lookouts, golf, wellness, activities, weddings and a slightly chaotic family operation in the middle of the Highlands.
We’ve now earned more than 2,000 five-star reviews, with many guests choosing to come back again and again. In 2023, we were completely awestruck to be named the FSB UK Small Business of the Year. In 2026, we were awarded FSB Scottish Family Business of the Year and received the HSBC Customer Champion Award.
We’re incredibly proud of those accolades, but the things we’re proudest of are harder to put on a plaque. A team that genuinely cares and a family that strives to keep trying new things.
We think Norman and Jessie would probably be rather pleased with how their leap of faith turned out and if the next generation has anything to do with it, the story isn’t ending here!
