A new waterfront sauna in Portree is seeking to establish itself as more than another visitor attraction, with its founders setting out plans for the business to support community organisations, promote water safety and make sauna use more accessible to local residents.
Portree Sauna has recently opened beside the Skye Sailing Club boathouse at Scorrybreac, offering wood-fired sauna sessions overlooking Portree Bay. The venture is a commercial partnership with the sailing club, with the sauna’s site payments lined up to provide a new and significant source of income for the volunteer-led organisation.
Angus Ross, representing Skye Sailing Club, said the arrangement offered an opportunity to generate revenue from the club’s facilities while introducing a new group of people to the site.
“The sailing club is an important community asset, but maintaining the clubhouse, equipment and activities all requires ongoing funding and volunteer effort,” he said. “The sauna gives us a new income stream without changing the fundamental purpose of the club. It also brings people down to Scorrybreac who may not previously have known much about the sailing club or the activities we provide.”
Portree Sauna founder Calum Slowther said the business had been designed from the outset to contribute to the community around it.
“We want Portree Sauna to be a platform for good, rather than simply a sauna that happens to be based in Portree,” he said. “That means supporting the sailing club financially, offering better access and pricing to local people, working with other community organisations and using the site to raise awareness of issues that matter locally.”
A successful early initiative has been the launch of a local membership scheme, available for £1 per year, which gives regular users access to preferential prices on sauna sessions. Calum said the nominal membership fee was intended to create a straightforward way of identifying and rewarding people who were likely to use the sauna regularly, rather than creating an expensive subscription model.
“We know that many people on Skye are interested in sauna and cold-water swimming, but the cost of attending regularly can quickly add up,” he said. “The £1 membership is our way of giving keen local users access to a consistently better price. We want the sauna to become somewhere people can return to throughout the year, not something they try once as a treat.”
The business also plans to form partnerships with local employers, charities and community organisations, allowing their staff, volunteers or members to access discounted sessions. Calum said discussions were beginning with a number of organisations, with the intention of prioritising groups that provide valuable services to the island.
