Edinburgh architects Peddie and Kinnear designed this building as a Victorian health spa, and it opened with a grand ball in 1878, giving guests access to the mineral springs discovered nearby earlier in the century. The original venture failed within a few years, and Andrew Philp took over the property, incorporating Philp’s Dunblane Hydropathic Company in 1896.
The building saw military service during the First World War, when the War Office requisitioned it as a hospital, and again in the Second, when it housed a boarding school for evacuated girls. Cypriot entrepreneur Sir Reo Stakis bought the struggling hotel in 1962, reportedly closing the deal in a highway lay-by, and turned it profitable within six weeks, later building a decades-long partnership with bandleader Jim Macleod that made the Hydro’s ceilidh evenings a Scottish institution. It became a DoubleTree by Hilton in 2009 after a series of ownership changes.