Scotch on the rocks? What’s next for whisky distillery visitor centres and why it matters to solicitors

With the Easter holidays signalling the start of the tourism season, Peter Ranscombe asks what the future holds for Scotland’s distilleries and their visitors’ centres.

Auchentoshan is famous for its triple distillation, yet the real magic happens in the Lowland distillery’s warehouses. When visitors taste whiskies surrounded by casks, they can easily forget they’re only 10 miles from Glasgow’s city centre.

Auchentoshan’s two-hour Whisky Tour and Individual Cask Warehouse Tasting Experience is an example of how Scotland’s distilleries have shifted from simply offering ‘tours’ to offering ‘experiences’. At £70, it marks a step up from the standard £22 hour-long tour.

“Guests are guided through tasting three single casks, curated by our master blender,” explains visitor centre manager Wendy Dunlop. “This immersive experience quickly became a favourite among visitors.”

As the holiday season gets underway and Scotland’s distilleries gear up for the tourist season, spirits giant Whyte & Mackay is preparing to reopen its newly refitted Dalmore distillery in Easter Ross on 27 April. The luxury brand joins a long line of distillers that have pumped money into their visitors’ centres, following in the footsteps of The Macallan’s mammoth £140 million investment in its Teletubby-esque distillery in 2018.

Yet, while many labels pump money into their visitor facilities, it’s a tale of two halves for the wider whisky industry. Diageo, Scotland’s biggest distiller, told the Journal: “Following a recent review and period of consultation, we have made the decision to close the visitor centre at Clynelish from 14 March. We can confirm that this decision is unrelated to distillery operations, where production will continue.” Clynelish lies just an hour’s drive north of The Dalmore.

Following news last autumn that Falkirk’s newly reopened Rosebank distillery was cutting jobs at its visitors’ centre, there’s been a steady trickle of posts on social network LinkedIn in which distillery staff have announced they’re leaving their tourism roles. A job here, a job there; not enough to grab the headlines but enough to indicate a trend as distillers struggle with a global slowdown in whisky sales. Against the wider economic backdrop, what’s led distilleries to this point and what may the future hold?

The three ages of distilleries

Stuart Cassells, former general manager of The Macallan estate and now a luxury hospitality and experiential consultant, points to the three stages of development through which the industry has passed, from ‘visitors’ centres’ to ‘visitor experiences’ and on to becoming ‘hospitality destinations’. “Glenfiddich was the first to open a visitors’ centre in 1969, but the idea really took off in the 1980s, with the increase in bus tours and American visitors,” he explains.

“The first generation of visitors’ centres involved a tour and then ‘exit through the gift shop’ – what in the industry we called ‘tea and a pee’, as people got off the coach to use the toilets and have a cuppa. That changed in 1996 when Edrington opened the Famous Grouse Experience at Glenturret Distillery in Crieff, with tourists being told about the brand’s wider story.”

When Stuart worked for Edrington at Glenturret, he was instrumental in shifting the focus from coach tours towards “fully independent travellers” who would visit distilleries and form a lasting appreciation for their brands – crucially, spending more money during their visit, and becoming unofficial ambassadors afterwards.

“When I moved to The Macallan, I introduced two measures: engagement, which went from 48 minutes to five hours; and net promoter score, which went from 38 to 96, which was unheard of, because 48 is seen as ‘good’ within the industry,” he reveals. “If The Macallan was the ultimate spirit then the distillery had to be the ultimate luxury spirit experience because people were travelling from Singapore and Hong Kong to visit. We turned it into a hospitality destination, with night-time dining and evening events, such as performances by Simple Minds and Nicola Benedetti, and the residency by Cirque du Soleil.”

Brian Moore, a corporate partner in law firm Denton’s Edinburgh office, agrees. “The biggest change I’ve seen in my 25-30 years working with the sector has been the number of distillers that view their distilleries as their ‘brand home’,” he says. “These distilleries and their visitors’ centres tell the stories of their brands.”

Brian highlights the importance of visitors’ centres for the newer generation of craft distilleries, such as Lindores Abbey and Kingsbarns in Fife, both of which are within easy reach of Edinburgh, Glasgow and golfers in St Andrews. “Many distilleries – including Holyrood and Port of Leith – have been designed with tourism in mind,” he adds. “There are many distilleries for which visitor spend is a really important part of their annual revenues.”

Looking to the future

Brian points out that many of the distilleries that have reduced or paused production may also have closed their visitors’ centres or reduced their opening hours. “From the visitors’ perspective, seeing the distillery operating is really important because it brings the story to life,” he says. “If distillers can’t show their visitors the stills operating then they’re less likely to run tours or open the distillery shop if there’s limited stock available.

“All of the uncertainty around the globe – and its impact on energy costs and grain prices – means the sector isn’t feeling any more confident about the next year or so. The outlook was already tough and it’s not looking any brighter.”

Figures released in February of this year by the Scotch Whisky Association showed a 1.8% dip in the value of exports last year to £5.4 billion, on the back of a 4.3% decline in the volume of overseas sales, falling to the equivalent of 1.3 billion 700ml bottles. Yet tourism remains a major opportunity, with Visit Britain’s economic development report in January 2026 predicting Scotland’s tourism market will grow faster than the UK average, notching up 3.1% of compounded annual growth between 2019 and 2035, outstripping the 1.7% for the UK as a whole.

Gareth Roberts, founder of Pagoda Management, which advises on the design and operation of distilleries, points to projects that are still investing in hospitality and tourism, including the revival of the Coleburn Distillery on Speyside and the creation of a single-estate distillery at Inverurie in Aberdeenshire.

“Tourism and hospitality are at the heart of modern projects,” he says. “Distilleries back in the 1980s and 1990s were big concrete boxes that no one ever thought people would want to visit, but now it’s the exact opposite, and the new guys are visitor-focused from the outset.”

From ‘experience’ to ‘transformational’

Stuart emphasises the importance of distilleries investing in hospitality and tourism, especially during the wider industry downturn. He points to the need for a clear brand strategy and a well-defined target audience. “During a downturn, it’s easy to pull money from the visitor side of the business, but actually distilleries should be doing the opposite,” he says.

“We’re moving away from the ‘experience economy’ into the ‘transformational economy’ – as management strategist Joe Pine puts it – because people want personal change on the back of an experience. For example, rather than just visiting a distillery, why not give people the chance to take part in the production process for a day? They’ll go from paying £50 for a tour and tasting to £200 to work there.”

In the hills above Speyside, The Cabrach Trust has opened a distillery to create jobs and attract people back to an area that has suffered from significant depopulation, as well as to generate money for future housing and other community projects. “There’s an intimacy of experience that we’re finding people love, both in terms of the scale and size of what we’re doing, but also that sense of proximity to the people who are making the whisky themselves,” explains Jonathan Christie, the trust’s chief executive. “It’s not a tour guide professional you’re speaking with; it’s our head distiller or one of our senior team or our farmer.

“It’s proving to be really successful because it’s about fine detail in the stillhouse, sharing the whisky heritage and stories of The Cabrach, or getting your boots muddy when we take folk round the farm, where our home barley, nature restoration projects and nature trails sit side-by-side. Visitors love hearing more about our social enterprise distillery, sat proudly in our old, restored farm steading, as well as the liquid-on-lips moment of trying our new-make spirit. There’s a far more socially conscious traveller who is clamouring for authentic, place-based experiences.”