this hotel has completed most of the needed refurb. The old wing still needs doing - they are doing this next winter - but the modern wing / ground floor and restaurant and bar are fantastic! Great location and freindly staff.

My partner and I when for a evening meal to the Tempus restaurant. Our booking was for 9 PM, and we arrived sharp. We were shown to our table...that was the first and the last thing that was right about this place! Well, we ordered a bottle of champaign. we were given a warm bottle and not even asked to taste it! Instead the waiter took it upon himself to pour some of it on my jacket and the rest into the glass. I did highlight that the chamgain was warm and asked for it to be changed. They did not have any cold champaign! so we waited until around 9:30PM for the drinks! in the mean time we ordered our starters and mains...you'd think they would get their act together and try harder for a customer thats already complained... well your wrong after an hour we got our starter! my partners starter was cold, and mine was not servered corectly...I asked ot speak to the manager, who listned to me and and appologised, but did not really care. For mains I had ordered Lobster, The cutlery for the starters and mains were not correct! I just don't understand how you could open a restaurant and not serve a dish without using the correct cutlery! I m not a snob or a difficult person, but if I 'm paying that sort of money for a meal in central edinburgh I would expect the restaurant to at least make an effort to place the right cutlry for the right dish on my table! Tempus failed there too! That was the last thing I was going to put up with that night. Finally the manager of the restaurant suggested that I did not require the proper cutlery for my lobster as the claws were not ment to be eaten! I have nothing further to add to the final comment. I did speak to the general manager prior to walking out of the restaurant and explain myself. He suggested that I should call him and come back for another meal...I think I will not bother and write a review in timeonline instead...but thanks for the offer anyway.

Room rates at £139 per night were higher than I have ever paid at the Grand Hyatt in Dubai - a magic 5 star deluxe place. The George was a total and absolute rip off.
Room 11* was essentially dirty with a poor cleaning. Lampshades, curtains and some surfaces were very dusty, and this caused me to need to use asthma inhalers, something I don’t have to do very often. Only one pillow was provided for each bed in the room. These were very grubby, and didn’t have pillow covers. I spent a good deal of each night coughing because of the filthy pillows and room (along with other residents I could hear in nearby rooms).
The room had an overall poor quality worn and battered feel and appearance -
The furniture was scratched and chipped. Several of the chipped areas had wood splinters - one of which I managed to get in my leg. The carpets were worn, stained, dirty and torn and frayed in a number of places. They looked as though they hadn’t been cleaned for years. They were so bad in fact that I would not walk around the room in bare feet.
The only window in the room faced on to a dirty rubbish strewn roof area. The room was constantly filled with very strong food smells even when the windows were closed. This was extremely unpleasant, and caused me to feel nauseous and have to leave the room on more than one occasion.
The roof had a sizeable population of gulls and pigeons from time to time, and I felt it was unsafe to have the windows open in any event as they came on to the windowsill.
Servicing of the room was poor. There appeared to be no washable mattress covers on the bed. I felt it best not to explore the condition of the mattresses too far, following the discovery of filthy pillows.
On day 2 the sheets and pillowcase were not changed on either bed. Towels had been changed, but insufficient left in the bathroom.
Other items such as complimentary bathroom items and the tea, coffee and sugar in the room were not replaced. I myself spoke to the staff directly responsible. They told me that they were often short of laundry items and other consumables and were not able to change and replace as they are required to do - shortages were frequent they said due to lack of stock and poor management.
The bathroom had cracked and broken floor tiles - the cracks were filled with dirt.
There was black mould around parts of the bath and on the floor where the bath/floor seals were - all indicating inadequate cleaning and attention to detail. As you may be aware, some types of black mould are notorious for causing allergic lung reactions.
In the bathroom, a towel rail is situated very close to the toilet, so close that you cannot sit on the toilet without your right leg touching the towel rail. The first time I used the toilet, I touched the towel rail at the top to check if it was hot - it was quite cold. However when I sat on the toilet, and my leg touched the lower half of the towel rail, it was scalding hot, and I burned my leg to a point where the skin was and remained reddened for some hours.
In the room, one table lamp switch had the plastic insulation cover missing, exposing metal parts in the switch. I was not tempted to switch it on and test if it was electrically live or not.
Corridor areas leading to the room were in a poor state, the most notable point to make was that carpet joins were secured with black plastic tape to cover fraying. I don’t think I ever witnessed the lift levelling correctly on any occasion, and I was generally very nervous about using it and used the stairs always

Virtually all the items I have raised above, I discussed with reception staff at the time, and at best I obtained a negative shrug of the shoulders, was told they had nothing better, so take it or leave it, and that the room would be renovated at some time in the future They didn’t care one bit. Unlike other reviews above, I found the staff to be surly and disinterested. The hotel was very busy with groupds of American tourists. What on earth possessed their agent to book them in this dump I cannot imagine. I have written to the Scottish Tourist Board, demanding that they review the star ratings of this place. From the room I was allocated, they would find it difficult to attain 2 stars, not the four they have.

We were looking for a spot to have a nice breakfast on Sunday morning and made the mistake of choosing the George Hotel buffet - without looking at it or asking the price, shame on us. It was about 10 am and apparently near the end of breakfast service, as nothing was replenished during the 45 minutes or so we were there. It was a very mediocre buffet, perhaps about average if it was included with the room...juice, some canned and a few bits of fresh fruit, porridge, cold cereals (not much left by the time we ate), some below-average croissants and pastries (the middle basket was empty, not sure what it would have contained), and a few hot items - fried eggs sitting on a warming plate that looked ghastly, decent scrambled eggs, sausages, and a couple other items. They asked three times what I wanted to drink and I still had to follow up to finally get my hot tea, which then tasted terrible - like when water is heated in a coffeepot and has that residue of stale coffee taste to it. The worst of it was when the bill came - they charged us £40 for three continental breakfasts, and would have been even more for the one who had hot food except they had neglected to tell us about this when they seated us, so he graciously decided to just charge us for the continental.
Ugh...one of the worst mistakes we've made on this trip!