Within The Village: Maria Murphy on making a village the destination

Within The Village occupies buildings that have stood at the centre of Roundstone, a village in Connemara on Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way, for more than 200 years. Once a family home, B&B, bar and grocery, they are now five connected townhouses and cottages and an event space around a shared courtyard, run year-round as a self-catering, eco-luxe stay, writes its co-founder Maria Murphy ¹.

The village as the destination

The model is loosely based on the Italian albergo diffuso, or scattered hotel ¹. Rather than an enclave, the village itself is the destination: guests are encouraged into local culture, creative communities and the landscape, and local craftspeople, artists and producers are part of the stay, so that the value of tourism stays in the community ¹. Murphy presents the restoration as adaptive reuse and place-based design that keeps the village's identity, and year-round opening as a way to support community resilience beyond the summer ¹.

Measured, not just described

Murphy frames the project against Regenera Luxury's approach, which she describes as looking for measurable positive impact across ecological, cultural, social and economic dimensions, beyond reducing harm, and notes that Within The Village was nominated for the 2026 Regenera Luxury Awards ¹; the Journal's awards issue lists it among the finalists ¹. Her conclusion is that "the future of luxury lies not in scale or exclusivity", and that small, embedded businesses can show what regenerative tourism looks like in practice ¹. The Magazine notes that the property was featured in National Geographic Traveller (UK)'s Luxury Collection 2025 ¹.

Our context

Within The Village belongs to a family of models we follow: a business whose proposition is the place around it, rather than what happens inside its walls. In Bhaktapur, The Nanee (official website) shares a public courtyard with its neighbours; in Granada, the Albaicín shows what happens when a historic neighbourhood loses residents. The question we ask of each, set out in how to choose a regenerative hotel, is what share of guest spending stays in the village and how that is shown.