This Scottish bookshop lets you live the bookseller dream
Airbnb has built much of its brand identity around the idea that the most memorable stays are not hotels — and this bookshop in Scotland’s makes that case more compellingly than most.
The ‘Open Book’ in Wigtown, Galloway, is listed on Airbnb and gives guests the run of a working independent bookshop for a week or two, with a private apartment above.
A team of local volunteers provides support, and a laptop and WiFi are included, but the experience of standing behind the counter and selling books to real customers is entirely the guest’s own.
The experience sits as part of the Wigtown Book Festival.
Set up by The Wigtown Festival Company, The Open Book is widely credited as the first bookshop residency of its kind. Its purpose is straightforward: to celebrate independent bookshops and bring visitors from around the world to Wigtown, which has held National Book Town status since 1998.
The listing sits naturally within Airbnb’s long-running push into unusual and experience-led accommodation, a strategy that has seen the platform host everything from treehouses to lighthouses.
The Open Book adds something rarer still: a genuine sense of purpose, and a working role at the heart of a community.
Galloway itself rewards exploration. The region inspired John Buchan’s The 39 Steps and offers ancient woodland, coastal scenery, a whisky distillery, cycling trails and the Southern Upland Way. Hosts strongly recommend arriving by car, though bicycles and local buses cover some ground.
“The Open Book’s aim is to celebrate books, independent bookshops and welcome people around the world to Scotland’s National Book Town,” said a spokesperson for The Wigtown Festival Company.
Guests pay for the stay as a cultural tourism experience, not a working placement, and are free to run the shop as they wish.
It is the kind of listing that does exactly what Airbnb has always said it wanted to do: make travel feel like living somewhere, rather than just visiting.
See Also
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- Airbnb offers stay at secret room inside the iconic Moulin Rouge windmill
- Airbnb are offering guests the chance to spend the night in the ‘Up’ house
