Couple Renovated Run-Down $460,000 Scottish Castle Into Luxury Hotel After Quitting Their Jobs In Dubai

Aug 06, 2021 by apost team

Stef Burgon and Simon Hunt decided to leave their corporate jobs in Dubai to purchase a castle after a life-changing Scottish road trip in 2014. The Scottish estate is called Kilmartin Castle and was built in 1550, which was during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots and cost the couple around $460,000 to buy.

Hunt said they quit their jobs in Dubai to move to Scotland full-time in June 2018, after living frugally for a few years to save up money for the renovations. Then the couple hired builders and architects to turn the castle into the luxury boutique hotel they always dreamed of. 

The hotel has five rooms and also offers a vacation rental for up to 10 guests. The vacation rental costs $1,090 per night, and the cost of a stay in one of the double rooms begins at $265 per night. The estate is also used as a wedding venue.

Each of the five rooms has a unique name. First is 1550, which Hunt said was probably the master bedroom the year the castle was built. It is the most unchanged room. Next is the Snug, which is a room with an original barrel-vaulted ceiling that makes you feel like you are sleeping in a cocoon. Then there is one of the more quirky rooms called Clark, which was the surname of the family that originally restored the castle in the 1980s after it was abandoned for 200 years. 

The next room is called Carswell, which is named after the first caretaker of the castle, John Carswell. The last room is called Speel, which is an old Scottish word for "the climb." Keep reading to learn more about Kilmartin castle.

The young couple is not only living their dream but also making history. Hunt, who was 31 at the time they bought Kilmartin, said to Insider, "When we bought it, there was an article where they said we were the youngest castle owners in Scotland." 

Hunt said in the same interview that they struggled to find "an original medieval castle," until they came across Kilmartin. "All of the castles we've been to, from the outside they look like awesome castles, and then you get inside and you could be in a Marriott hotel," said the young castle owner.

Even though they wanted the decor to have a rustic feel, there was a lot of work to be done before they could get their business going. "Things would go wrong all the time," Hunt said. "Like things would burst or pipes would break when it would freeze." 

"It was like holy crap, we need to do this properly, otherwise it's going to just keep costing us a lot of money," Hunt added. "So we went back to Dubai and we moved in with our friends Will and Britt and lived a really frugal life for a few years." 

Hunt and Burgon said while they had saved $111,600 while living in Dubai, the renovation "swallowed" their original budget and ended up costing them upwards of $313,000. However, the pricey renovations were worth it, and now the business is booming, and the hotel is making money. "It basically runs without us," Hunt said. "We've got quite a lot of staff, we've got gardeners once a week, we've got three cleaners, we have a chef and our handyman." 

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