How do I make race days and Civic Week pay in my Kelso holiday let?
Carlton Scott | Scottish Borders Business | September 2026
Price them as events and open the calendar early. Kelso’s National Hunt racing runs between September and the end of May, Civic Week fills July, and the Border Union Show brings the farming county into town. All of them bring guests who book months ahead and pay for a good bed near the Square. Put a 2-night minimum on those dates and charge the top of your range. Before the guests leave, offer them a returning-guest rate.
The town carries the rest of the year on its own merits. The Square is one of the handsomest in Scotland, and Floors Castle’s grounds and gardens sit on the edge of the town. Kelso Racecourse runs a full National Hunt season. The Tweed and the Teviot meet here too, which brings anglers and walkers who come back to the same property year after year. Over a year, that repeat trade brings in more than any single weekend.
What occupancy should a self-catering property in Scotland expect?
Around 41%. Savills’ May 2026 research puts average self-catering occupancy in Scotland at 41% for 2025, down slightly from 41.6% the year before, so a property at 41% is doing nothing remarkable and one at 55% is doing well. Occupancy on its own misleads, though: a let at 60% on a low nightly rate can earn less than one at 45% priced properly. Track occupancy and average nightly rate together, month by month, because the pair decides the year, and either one alone can make it look better or worse than it is.
How many nights do I need to let to be on business rates?
At least 140 nights. On mygov.scot’s March 2026 guidance, that’s how long the property has to be available to let to be rated as self-catering instead of paying council tax, and the assessor will ask for evidence of actual lettings. Business rates are usually the better side of that line, because the Small Business Bonus can take the bill to nil where the rateable value is up to £12,000, but only while you hold a valid short-term let licence.
In Borders holiday lets, we usually see owners watching occupancy and not the rate, so a full calendar can hide a poor year. The lets that make money charge properly for the weeks people fight over and cost the changeover in full. They also stop paying platform commission on guests who’d have booked direct anyway.
How profitable is a holiday let really?
Less than the gross suggests. Sykes Holiday Cottages’ 2026 Holiday Letting Outlook puts the average owner’s gross income at £25,600 for 2025, and its own cost lines take roughly £7,400 of that before any mortgage: bills £2,140, changeovers £1,190, maintenance £1,580, tax and licensing £1,450 and marketing £1,000. What’s left comes down to three numbers you control: the nightly rate, the shoulder-month occupancy, and what the booking platforms keep. Know all three for your own property before you believe any average.
Is the Scottish Borders bringing in a visitor levy?
Not yet. Scottish Borders Council opened a fact-finding exercise on a visitor levy in December 2025 and hasn’t decided whether to bring one in. Its councillors voted unanimously against a tourist tax in 2019, and Highland Council paused its own scheme. Keep an eye on the consultations, and in the meantime set your prices so a 5% levy could go on top of the room rate without coming out of your margin.
How much does a business coach cost in the Scottish Borders?
Between £500 and £3,500 a month plus VAT for one-to-one coaching, depending on the coach’s experience, according to Alan Wick’s May 2026 guide to UK coaching fees. The bill runs for as long as the coaching does. The price of any advice comes down to how much of the work the adviser does for you: coaching talks you through it, and a fixed-fee diagnose-and-fix piece of work goes through the numbers with you and makes the changes. The Profit Clarity Framework is the second kind: a fixed £1,495 + VAT for 30 days on your property’s real numbers, with nothing to pay after that.
For a Kelso let the first job is usually the event calendar, because a year’s fixtures are published long before most owners open their own booking pages.
Where can a Kelso holiday let owner get help with the numbers?
Carlton Scott’s Profit Clarity Framework™ is a 30-day diagnose-and-fix process on your real numbers at the fixed fee above. It’s built for owners who do their own changeovers, and it leaves you with a more profitable let. We’ve set out how it works for the town’s properties on our Kelso holiday let page, including how little of your time it takes and what we’d need to start. There’s also an overview of the framework for holiday lets, and you can see the same numbers at work in a commuter town in our Galashiels café article. Most clients who commit to the framework and follow our recommendations see a full return on the fee within 90 days.
Photo © M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph (geograph.org.uk/photo/7300175)