Porth Tocyn, a family-run hotel on the Llŷn Peninsula, has been named Wales' Best Hotel at the 2026 AA Hospitality Awards. The hotel, which opened in 1948, is now run by Henry and Kelly Fletcher-Brewer, the fourth generation of the Fletcher-Brewer family to own it.
Henry Fletcher-Brewer, who runs the hotel with his wife Kelly, says the family connection is central to its success. "Porth Tocyn has a lot to answer for," he said, explaining that he met Kelly after his father hired her to work at the hotel. The couple had built careers in London but decided to return home to start a family.
A family history spanning four generations
The property, formerly known as Trem Y Don, was bought by Henry's great-grandparents, Bill and Norah Fletcher-Brewer, in 1947 and opened as a hotel in 1948. Before that, it was a mine manager's house and offices for the Assheton Mines, later bought by a London solicitor who turned it into a "gentleman's residence".
Norah and Bill bought the property and its 40-plus acres for £10,000. Norah wanted to create a place where "like-minded people could come and stay, meet one another, talk and enjoy each other's company". Henry said: "'Conviviality' is probably the word that best describes what she was trying to achieve."
In the early days, guests had to book for a week and arrive on a Thursday. Henry said: "Needless to say, we've relaxed the admissions policy somewhat since 1948!"
From a carving knife to an exceptional following
Henry's grandparents, Barbara and David Fletcher-Brewer, took over in the 1950s, initially working alongside Bill and Norah until a family disagreement over a carving knife led to a split. Henry said: "As far as anyone can now remember, the whole thing was over a carving knife."
By 1976, Henry's father, Nick, joined the business. Henry said that Nick and his mother Barbara built an "exceptional following", though he admitted: "I don't think either would mind me saying that putting two extremely eccentric people in the same building and asking them to run a hotel together didn't necessarily make those the easiest of years!" He added: "Remarkably, we're still benefiting from that today, with families who first came during their time continuing to visit us."
Henry's mother, Louise, worked as a chef at the hotel before marrying Nick in 1981. Henry said: "So perhaps there is something in the water here, because my parents met at Porth Tocyn - and then Kelly and I did exactly the same thing a generation later."
Magical childhood memories
Henry, who is 37, grew up at the hotel with his brothers Richard, now 42, and a younger brother who died ten years ago following a battle with cancer. He described their childhood as "chaotic, but extremely fun" and "magical", surrounded by the coastline and Snowdonia mountains, with hotel guests' children to play with.
Now, Henry and Kelly's sons, Oliver, six, and Alfie, four, are enjoying similar experiences. Henry said: "One of the loveliest things is watching them swimming in the hotel pool with other guests' children. Quite often, the parents of those children are people I used to play with when I was a child here myself."
What makes a winner
Asked about the secret of winning Wales Best Hotel, Henry pointed to guest loyalty. "Many stay several times a year, year after year, and some families have been coming for generations," he said. "Completely changing what Porth Tocyn is or chasing every new hotel trend that comes along would be counter-intuitive to the longevity of the business."
He added: "We'd much rather evolve gradually than constantly reinvent ourselves. We try to take what we've learned from the generations before us, combine that with our own experiences and ideas, and then decide what genuinely makes Porth Tocyn better without losing what made people fall in love with it in the first place."
Henry concluded: "There's a Welsh word, hiraeth, which is difficult to translate directly into English. It's a sort of longing for home, for a place and the people and memories that belong to it. I think there was probably a bit of hiraeth involved for both of us. The longer we were away, the more we appreciated what we had grown up with here and what we wanted our own children to experience."
