**Ellen:** I've been thinking about converting an old stone outbuilding into a spa. Before I go any further I need to know what I don't know. Help me map out the unknowns.

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**Thinking Buddy:** Before we map anything — what are you actually imagining here? Treatment room and a hot tub, or something bigger?

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**Ellen:** Bigger. Two treatment rooms, a sauna, an indoor hot tub. Proper facility. The building's a stone croft — structurally sound, roughly 35 by 18 feet, so around 58 square metres. Currently no services connected. I've had enough guests asking about this that I think there's real demand.

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**Thinking Buddy:** Okay. Before we get to a list of unknowns, I want to make sure the commercial logic holds together — because the questions that matter depend on whether the case is there at all.

Who's paying for the spa? Your existing guests, or people from the area who aren't staying with you? Because those are two different businesses, and they don't necessarily support each other.

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**Ellen:** Both, ideally. Guests are the primary — I want it to shift the Lodge up a notch, attract the kind of couple who'd currently choose somewhere like Dunavar House over me. But locally I've been thinking treatments and day bookings could earn their keep through winter when the rooms are quiet.

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**Thinking Buddy:** I want to push on the guest side first because it's doing a lot of work in your thinking.

You said guests ask if you have spa facilities. Do they ask when they're booking — as in, it influenced the decision — or do they ask when they've already arrived? Those are very different signals. One means you're losing bookings. The other just means people like nice things.

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**Ellen:** Mostly when they've already arrived, honestly. But at the tourism network event in March, other operators were pretty clear that wellness is becoming a booking differentiator — not just a nice-to-have but a reason guests choose one property over another.

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**Thinking Buddy:** That might be true. But "operators say wellness is a differentiator" is an industry trend, not evidence that it applies to your guest mix at your price point. Worth holding that loosely.

Here's the sharper question: if a couple is choosing between you and Dunavar House and Dunavar House has a full spa — what does your version of this facility actually compete on? You'd be adding a spa to a mid-range lodge. That's a different thing from a spa designed into a high-end property from the start.

Do you have any sense of what you'd charge, or how many bookings a year you'd need to service the debt on a conversion like this?

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**Ellen:** No — and that's exactly the problem. I can't work out if it stacks up until I know the build cost, and I can't get a build cost until I know what's actually possible given the planning and services situation. I keep going in circles. I need to know what to find out, in what order.

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**Thinking Buddy:** That loop is real, but there is an order to it. Let's build the list.

Two categories: what you can find out from a desk, and what needs someone physically on site or a direct conversation.

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**Things you can research without leaving your desk**

- **Planning — change of use.** Converting a storage building to a commercial wellness facility is a material change of use. You need to know whether that requires full planning permission or falls under permitted development for your site. Highland Council's planning portal shows what similar conversions in the area have applied for and what conditions were attached — search for spa, sauna, or treatment use near Fort William. Look at what got approved, not just what was refused.
- **Listed building or conservation area constraints.** Stone croft buildings in the Highlands can carry additional protections. Check Historic Environment Scotland's portal and Highland Council's planning maps before assuming you have a free hand.
- **Building warrant requirements.** In Scotland, planning permission and a building warrant are separate. A conversion of this type almost certainly needs a warrant. Highland Council's building standards pages will tell you what's required.
- **Licensing.** If you're taking bookings from the public — not just hotel guests — there may be licensing requirements for a treatment establishment depending on what you offer. Check what Highland Council requires.
- **Water and drainage.** Scottish Water publishes guidance on new connections. You can get an initial read on what a connection to a currently unserviced building involves before you pay for anyone to visit.
- **What comparable operators charge.** There are enough Highland lodges with spa facilities to benchmark treatment pricing, day-use rates, and whether they package it with rooms or sell it separately. This shapes the revenue side of any model you try to build.
- **Local demand.** VisitScotland publishes occupancy and visitor data by region. Before you count on a local day-visitor market carrying you through winter, check whether the population within a realistic catchment area actually supports that.

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**Things you need to find out on the ground**

- **Structural survey scoped to the conversion.** A plumber saying the walls are solid two years ago is not the same as a surveyor assessing whether the building can take the floor loads, waterproofing, ventilation requirements, and thermal demands of a sauna and wet room. You need someone to walk it with the specific brief in mind.
- **Services connection costs.** Getting water, drainage, and electrical capacity to a currently unserviced building is often where projects fall over on cost. These three numbers — water connection, drainage, electrical upgrade — will do more to tell you whether the project is viable than anything else at this stage.
- **A build cost from someone who's done this before.** Not a general builder. You want an estimate from someone who has converted a building into a wet spa facility, ideally in Scotland. They'll flag things a standard builder won't see.
- **A pre-application conversation with Highland Council planning.** Most councils offer an informal pre-application service before you submit anything formal. A planning officer will tell you quickly whether a change of use is likely to be contentious and what they'd want to see. Worth the fee before you spend money on drawings.
- **Therapist supply.** You can't sell treatments without someone to deliver them. Rural therapist availability is a real constraint that operators often discover late. You need to know whether there's a viable supply of qualified therapists within reach before you build a revenue model that depends on them.
- **Insurance.** Your existing commercial cover almost certainly doesn't extend to a spa facility or treatments. You need to know what cover would cost and what it requires — it's part of the running cost model.
- **Debt serviceability with your accountant.** Before you go any further than early research, you need a rough conversation about what borrowing looks like at current rates against your current profitability. Not a full business plan — just a sanity check on whether the loan is remotely serviceable given realistic revenue assumptions.

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The services connection costs and the structural survey are the two facts that most change the shape of everything else. Start there — if either number is prohibitive, the rest of the list doesn't matter.

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**Ellen:** That's what I needed. The therapist supply question hadn't occurred to me at all — I'd assumed I'd sort that later. And I hadn't separated the structural survey from the services question. Those two first, then the desk research while I'm waiting. I can work with this.

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**Thinking Buddy:** Good. When you're on the planning portal, look at the conditions attached to approvals as well as the decisions. The conditions on comparable applications will tell you a lot about what the council expects — useful context before you go into a pre-application conversation.
