InterContinental Edinburgh – lounge and rooms

I’m just wondering where Diamond breakfast will be served, though if they offer it via room service that would be very pleasant! We’ll be out all day so not worth paying for lounge access.

I was there last week as a Diamond. Upgraded to a Junior Suite on the first floor – but as an upgrade didn’t get lounge access.

The lounge is on the ground floor on the way to breakfast (which is served in the upstairs bit of Le Petit Beefbar, as was pretty good!)

I do wonder if Burr and Co has been made smaller than when it was serving breakfast – it definitely didn’t have enough tables to serve breakfast for the whole hotel.

@LiamG, was the upgrade at check-in? They mithered me a couple of times by email to pay for a further upgrade, which I resisted, and my booking is still showing as the rather uninspiring King Premium Pet Friendly!

NorthernLass wrote:

@LiamG, was the upgrade at check-in? They mithered me a couple of times by email to pay for a further upgrade, which I resisted, and my booking is still showing as the rather uninspiring King Premium Pet Friendly!

Upgrade was ambassador guaranteed, so happened within a few hours of booking. They did then try to sell me lounge access by email for £50 a day… but given I have diamond breakfast it wasn’t really worth considering.

Got an email from The George offering lounge access for £60 pn. I’d probably go for it if we weren’t getting breakfast via Diamond, but as it is I don’t feel it would be great value.

@AnotherUser, I think that would have been the Forth View room or something like that, I was “invited” to pay extra to upgrade to that! Trouble is, when it rains you can’t even see it, and at this time of year it’s mostly dark anyway 😂

Just has a call from the hotel trying to sell me lounge access again. Explained (again) that as we will be choosing free breakfast as our welcome amenity, I feel this would not be good value. It feels like they are getting a bit desperate but it hasn’t occurred to them to offer a discounted rate which takes this into account!

Stayed 3 nights last New year and it was not good. There was no lounge and no upgrade as Diamond Ambassador. They had a wedding or other event on the 30th and it drained resources from everywhere. My room faced the rear and while comfortable would have been found in any decent Crowne Plaza.

It’s an odd hotel. The lobby / reception is lovely but you then move into a labyrinthine series of very dull corridors!

The breakfast was fine but uninspiring but the service just awful! They just did not have enough staff. We walked out of a dinner reservation as it was chaotic!

It’s very convenient for everything at Hogmanay and directly opposite the dome which is a must but requires booking.

NorthernLass wrote:

Our stay wasn’t great, either! (Fortunately we had a lovely time apart from the hotel experience). There was no acknowledgement of Ambassador status or benefits at check in, and they had added a charge for our upgrade to the bill and tried to say I had agreed to this! I had to produce an email trail (which thankfully I could get from my phone) to prove that I hadn’t agreed to it, despite having been pestered several times to accept.

We were then allocated a very basic room, though at least it had a King-size bed so must have been 1 cat above what I originally booked. There was no welcome gift or letter in the room until several hours later when they appeared at separate times, which made me wonder if we’d originally been allocated a better room, then downgraded when we refused to pay for it!

I was offered the Diamond amenity choice (which was the very good buffet breakfast) and they did honour the 4 pm checkout so it wasn’t a complete fiasco but I’m not inclined to book again atm. I actually much prefer the Kimpton but of course you don’t get Ambassador benefits there any more and the location isn’t as convenient.

Phew, tbh I’d been waiting for your review before deciding where to use an expiring AMB free night by end of Jan. IC Lisbon it is!

The George Hotel (IC Edinburgh) has a very poor reputation among Edinburgh hospitality staff – who unsurprisingly, with the number of hotels and restaurants in Edinburgh, have a very vocal social media group.

Reason is, I have been told, that despite being actually owned by IHG, all the staff were sacked at the start of Covid instead of furloughing them on 80%. Then, as lockdowns came and went, the George found it hard to attract anyone back.

Of course, the consequence is that the better potential staff have chosen to go elsewhere. And poo slides down! So if you have poor heads of department etc, you’ll probably get poor performing routine staff.