Cairn

"The Cairns Hotel is located in a perfect position to explore the city of Edinburgh. Clean and well equipped. But the staff were not friendly during check-in and forget about being helpful. We booked 3nights stay with a family of 5 for 3 bedroom apartment. We travel from Australia and Singapore to stay in Scotland for 3 weeks visiting for a family wedding invitation. Our flights arrive in the morning of 14th Oct at 7am from a long trip where we came from. We understand that the room will not be ready and we requested to store all of our 5pcs of the big lugguage and 5 small bags. They told us to keep all the bags in the store room ourselves and come back to do the check-in in after 3pm. Four of my other family members were still out for sight seing to kill the time. At 3pm I went to check-in first to collect the the room key and there were 3 tofour staff on duty. I was given a room key to go down in the basement of the hotel. There is no lift to go down. I was explained to get to our room I need to out out of the hotel turn left from the entrance and and the room is 100m away and down by the stairs. The stairs were very deep with about 15steps to go down with all the luggages that we brought. Not a single person help me to get the bags out of the store room or at least by the Entrance of the door to our room. All yhey did just dtand and watch with asking if I need some help!! This hotel did not offer a proper service for a good hospitality! Shafig."

"The Cairn Hotel is located in the perfect position to explore the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Clean and well equipped with friendly and helpful staff. Looking forward to staying here again."

"I felt like I was staying in a youth hostel but paying fancy hotel prices. The good: staff were welcoming, friendly, and helpful. Hotel was well-signed and easy to find from the outside. Not too far from the city center. Firm, comfortable mattress. The ok: clean enough, I guess. Everything had a fresh coat of paint, but looked kind of kicked up anyway. The bad: Seriously low on amenities. For $300 USD per night I expect the hotel to at least provide shampoo and conditioner. There wasn’t even a hook in the bathroom to hang up a robe or clean clothes. Shower drain backed up really fast so you had to limit your shower to 5 minutes or less or it would overflow. (To be fair, I did not request maintenance of this - maybe they would have fixed it but for just 2 nights I decided to deal with it). There were a couple of packets of tea and instant coffee in the room but no way to heat up water - was I supposed to use hot tap water?? Breakfast was as gross as any American motel breakfast. Packaged pasties, rubbery scrambled eggs, limp slices of ham, dispensers of cereal. Lots of mean signs around telling people not to do things like “don’t bring any food out of the breakfast room or we’ll charge you for it.” (I would make the case that anyone who can afford a $300/night hotel room doesn’t have to hoard breakfast cereal). I saw ZERO young, freeloading backpackers. It was all American and Eastern Europeans, aged 60+. Maybe the worst part of breakfast was the American country music they played over the loudspeakers. The second day we just skipped breakfast and went out for pastries. A room key had to be entered into a clip on the wall for the lighting or power to work - meaning you couldn’t leave your devices to charge while out of the room. Our room’s window looked directly out on the street on the ground floor, and next door was a foreign embassy, so there were constantly lines of people right out our window all day long. I felt I had to keep the blackout curtains shut in order to have any privacy. The lighting in the room was cold white LED light, the opposite of cozy. The room was so tiny that to walk between the end of the bed and the wall you had to turn sideways and scoot past like a crab. As a seasoned traveller, I’m embarrassed I was so completely bamboozled by the hotel’s advertising. Hard pass."