Holiday Inn Express Edinburgh City Centre by IHG — Hotel in City of Edinburgh

First up, allow me to praise the staff at this IHG location, all were extremely friendly, polite and pleasant but a special mention to Mikey & Zubair at reception. Both guys were friendly, chatty and very helpful with any questions or help we needed. Also a huge thanks to Anathalie Nicolas, whom we never actually met but looked after our important request for a specific type of room plus his advice on using public transport to get from the airport to the hotel was an absolute huge help

On arrival at Edinburgh airport, we took the tram to the hotel. The Hotel stop is "Picardy Place" and is in fact, directly outside the hotel, and I mean directly outside!

Tram fares between the Airport and City centre are:

Single adult £7.50

Single child £3.80

Adult open return £9.50

Child open return £5

Our check in was quick, friendly and efficient with Mikey & Zubair offering lots of suggestions from a tourist point of view. My requested quiet room request was allocated and it was perfect

Room 412, on the 4th floor was at the end of a corridor with near perfect soundproofing and no ambient noise from either outside or from other guests. Although the room was not as big as we would have liked, it was perfectly adequate. The large TV worked really well and lots of channels but a channel list would have been nice in the room. The room had enough power points around it including at bedside with standard 3 pin (UK) sockets and USB points. As other reviews have alluded to ... the bed was quite comfortable ensuring we had a great nights sleep. Tea / Coffee was also supplied in the room with a small kettle

Many "value" hotels tend to have bathrooms with poor shower pressure, however this Holiday Inn Express had one of the best water shower pressure I have encountered

Overall the room experience was excellent but one small issue was with housekeeping. We had requested a "Top Sheet" for the bed and after the first nights stay, housekeeping removed it, meaning we had to go looking again to have it replaced, which in fairness was no issue for staff, but it should not have been removed. In relation to towels, although there were 2 bath-towels, only one small hand towel was in the room, we asked and received a second one, but once again, the extra towel was removed by housekeeping ... in fairness, these were not serious issues in our opinion, just a tad annoying

On each of our 3 mornings we had breakfast in the hotel . Each morning was very busy, the hotel has a "Traffic light" sign in the lifts explaining the expected busy times. Breakfast is self service buffet style but laid out in a "U" shape., this made it difficult to access some items if you just wanted to get milk for tea / coffee or croissants as guests getting breakfast would be in your way

Food quality was OK, but the "Hash Browns" had a strange texture to them and very pale colour , bacon was excellent, sausages were fine but the scrambled egg was very flaky and easily broke up. We had tea each morning, I enjoy a strong cup and the supplied Twinings tea-bags were a joy to drink. Staff at breakfast were constantly cleaning up and worked really hard. Breakfast was available weekday 0630-1000 and weekend from 0630-1030

In the reception area, there was coffee / tea facilities, a welcome sight after a long day sightseeing. Also here is the hotel bar with plenty of choice for those that enjoy a tipple

The hotel location is perfect, its a 5 or 10 minute walk to Princess Street and the Hop-On bus tours at Waterloo place

Would I return ..... absolutely! Not one of my negative comments are serious enough to stop me returning. The outstanding thing for me was the hotel staff. A word for management ... any chance of changing the shape of the breakfast area from a "U" shape to a full length one and those hash browns, lets have them cooked to a dark brown...

The hotel is located in the new town area. Super convenient. The tram station is just 4 mins away. Tram takes you from and to the airport. £9 return. Around the hotel, there are plenty of restaurants, a John Lewis shopping mall, to feed yourself and do some shopping. The balmoral hotel is just nearby where we went to grab a drink in the evening. Everything is within 20 mins walking distance, which we found it super convenient. Breakfast was good selection of food though very crowded on the 2/F. But after knowing you can eat breaky on 1/F, we never joined the crowd again 😅. The breakfast area is a bit too tight for the capacity of the hotel. I always needed to wait to grab stuff and things are just clustered together. Room service did not exist - maybe that is a way to cut cost. But I am still very not used to this. For example, when we ran out of toilet rolls, reception asked me to go and collect it myself… it is a bit awkward when you are running out of stuff and you need to go out of your room to get sorted 🥲 We travelled with our 2YO hence booked a double bed room with a sofa bed. I thought the sofa bed should be made already for sleep but it didn’t not. So the first night we were all squeezed in the double bed which was crowded! The second day, I asked the house keeping to help us set up the sofa bed which they did, great! The bed was NOT comfortable at all. If you really are fussed about this, maybe this hotel is not your choice. Lack of storage in the room makes things difficult to be organised. Our room is located on the ground floor which is the same level of the car park. I find it a bit annoying that the corridor is always colder than the rest of the hotel because it is connected to the car park. Accessibility is a big issue in this hotel, there are a lot of steps. For example, entrance of the hotel has no slope for pram users and wheelchair users. Inside the hotel, there are always mezzanines which cannot be accessed by lifts. Insulation between rooms are not so great. In addition, some rooms can be connected into one. But that leaves the insulation even worse for the occasion where the rooms are not needed to...

On arrival I stood at reception for approx 10 minutes whilst one staff member finished there telephone conversation and no other staff member was available, a pleasant cheerful conversation and check in , the overall stay was not a good experience and definitely not value for the excessive payment for 2 nights (I have been informed that I cannot state the price I paid even though it was fact , it was NOT value for price paid ). the room was cramped the mattress was old and needs changed causing an uncomfortable night's sleep , the entrance to the hotel was completely blocked in the late afternoon by a very large group of what appeared to be exchange students checking in , this blockage was in fact becoming a safety hazard as it spilled out into the street and there should have been a staff member or adult from the group keeping order as guest were unable to get in or out of the hotel including myself and family at that time .

Breakfast on the first morning was absolutely manic with no order being observed and I felt sorry for the staff who were trying very hard to keep on top of the constant noise and crowd of school children moving back and forth to an already overcrowded buffet area .

Next morning I requested a breakfast pack to go as we were checking out early , I was handed a brown paper bag and asked to take what I needed , the staff apologized for not having the correct size lids for the cups as they had ordered the wrong size ,there wasn't much we could take out for breakfast apart from a piece of fruit and a pastry. Room was clean ,staff were pleasant but this does not equate to value for money and not something I wish to experience ever again. Not what I expected as a rewards member.

Sadly did not meet...