One of Ireland’s most historic hotels, the Royal Valentia on Valentia Island in Co Kerry has been sold to Unique Boutique Hospitality, an American company headed by former cybersecurity expert and entrepreneur Bobby Christian and Nancy Schoeck, chief hospitality officer for the group.
“It’s not just a hotel,” Christian said. “It’s a living piece of Irish history and our commitment is to preserve what makes it timeless, to honour its heritage [and work towards] its bicentennial in 2033.”
The hotel’s spectacular quayside setting in Knightstown village, close to where the car ferry crosses from the mainland on the Ring of Kerry and Wild Atlantic Way, was offered for sale for €3 million by the owners, the Kidd family from Dublin, on their retirement in August 2024.
The hotel is also located near the Transatlantic Cable Museum, which commemorates the first transatlantic cable connecting Valentia Island to Heart’s Content in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1866, which transformed global communications.
Initially opened as a small inn in 1833 around the time when Alexander Nimmo was designing Knightstown Village – one of the first planned villages in Ireland – the hotel’s prosperity grew as did the fortunes of the Valentia Island slate quarry, which employed some 500 men in the 1850s and whose slates were used on the Paris Opera House, St Pauls’ Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.
After a large rockfall in 1911 and a long period of inactivity, the quarry has recently reopened under a new owner the Killarney geologist Dr Aidan Forde.
The hotel’s royal name was earned in the mid 1860s when the then British prince of Wales, later king Edward VII, stayed at the hotel followed by other members of British royalty as tourist interest in the cable grew.
Over its long history, it has had various proprietors including initially the Young family in the nineteenth century, the Galvin family who modernised the property in the early 1900s, the Huggards who ran it for more than 50 years before selling to locals Michael and Tessie Ó Sullivan.
Since 2005, Dubliners Vincent and Fiona Kidd have continued the tradition with a development and restoration programme having featured on the RTÉ TV series At Your Service with the Brennan brothers in 2011.
The hotel was sold with planning permission for an additional 21 bedrooms, which Christian intends to build to include a gym and sauna, and it will remain open, as it has done all year round, while the improvements are made.
At an official dinner at the hotel when it was announced that Unique Boutique Hospitality was the preferred buyer, Vincent Kidd commended Christian on the three months he spent getting to know local people and the area as proof of his commitment to the project.
The keys were officially handed over to him on January 23rd. “Every time I go there, I feel its magic,” Christian said. “It feels like the edge of the world.”