Our recent stay at Rick's was highly anticipated, but sorely disappointing. After booking this "boutique hotel" based on TripAdvisor and Mr. and Mrs. Smith reviews, we thought this would be a luxurious departure from the big chain hotels normally found in cities. Rick's location is unsurpassed as it sits on Frederick Street (at the corner of Frederick and Thistle) between George and Queen Streets -- you can nearly see the castle from the street. Rick's, however, has a lot of work to do to live up to the "boutique hotel" moniker.

We requested early check-in, but this was not a possibility; reception was lukewarm and a little awkward considering you check in to a desk in a restaurant. We were not in the room we were promised upon booking, but were switched into Room 10 on the third of three floors with no problem. There is no elevator, and when we looked for some help with our bags, the receptionist weakly asked the waiter who responded with a look of, "Are you crazy?" They both shared a laugh, and my husband ended up carting our 100 lbs. of luggage up three floors himself.

Once we arrived upstairs and walked in the room, we were hit with a wave of heat to which the receptionist replied, "Wow, it's really hard to breathe in here." Obviously, the hotel staff is largely out of touch with their rooms, as the heat was stifling and continued to be so throughout our stay. There is no air conditioning in the rooms, and this lends itself to the necessity of keeping the glass door and the window in the room open. The issue with this is that the back of Rick's is on an alley through which people walk at all hours of the night. The alley is also the unfortunate location of the garbage cans for a number of area businesses; we were subjected to garbage and bottle dumping several times a night, and garbage and recycling pick-up every morning from anywhere between 7 am and 9 am.

We were not acknowledged at all by the hotel staff, even though we walked through the bottom floor restaurant several times. We finally received a little attention after complaining about the heat on our second night; the assistant manager was extremely apologetic after my litany of complaints, and he adjusted our rate upon check-out. The manager, who checked us out, was also empathetic and noted that he is aware of the noise problems, air conditioning issues, etc., and that Rick's can no longer afford to neglect these issues in a competitive high-end Edinburgh hotel market. I would also suggest management consider the coldness of the staff and the moldy tiling and peeling bathroom paint. I appreciate their price adjustment for us, but Rick's was the low point in an otherwise sparkling experience in Edinburgh.

As a regualr user of Ricks over the last three years, I have noticed the standards both in service and the quality of the rooms going down over the last year. My most recent visit was for two nights during the festival Aug08. I am accepting of the noise mentioned in so many of the other threads but can live with this. The rooms are now starting to be a bit tired, bathroom doors not closing, furniture damaged, etc. During our recent stay I had a couple of gripes which I brought to the attention of the manager. The bathroom sink plug was missing making it extremely hard to have a wash and my husband to have a shave using the sink. On the second night both the face cloths vanished from the room. Despite assurance from the manager that these and the plug would be replaced this never happened. The room was extremely warm during the two nights and despite adjusting the wall thermostat seemed to make no difference. The only option was to open the windows and let in the early morning bottle noise which wasnt the greatest wake up call. No papers were offered for delivery to the room either of the days we stayed. On several occasions our key cards had to be reprogrammed to get access to the room. The breakfasts were good but I had sympathy with the one barman behind the bar making the breakfast coffees, smoothies, etc, he was obviously overrun. Consequently the breakfast service wasnt very good. I am aware that the manager has changed recently at Ricks and I can only hope this is to make improvement rather than being the catalyst of the downturn. Ricks can do better, only time will tell !.

Ok, so we didn't listen to the advice given to us from TripAdvisor! Sorry!

We went ahead anyway, ignoring the advice about the loud rubbish trucks and the dishes from the back door etc etc.

We should've listened!

We were woken up almost every 10/20 minutes from approx. 07:00am, with people emptying bins, bucket lorries, deliveries for the pub directly behind our room and people talking right outside our room.

We were on the ground floor. The next morning, we had a nosey van driver and his friend staring into our room from about 20ft away. So we had to close the dark, thick curtains on a sunny day, and then put the light on to get ready!

The room was very hot at night time and had to leave the window open which we weren't happy about, as we were directly onto a pub in a darkened alley way!

We had the most awful painting in our room. Of a young woman, sleeping in bed, in a dark, mucky, dingey tunnel. We tried to understand it and the only conclusion we could come to is that she was dying in her sleep and the story to the painting was probably "No light at the end of the tunnel", as the tunnel was in darkness. NOT great for a romantic night, or a good night's sleep! So we had to cover it with the blanket!

We had breakfast the next morning, which was nice. Slightly overdone but nice. We had the full english which was tasty, but I didn't touch my coffee as I asked for milk and it was still practically black. Overall, food was OK.

We didn't leave our luggage here, because we realised that the luggage is only left beside the main door where staff are not always visible. NOT SAFE.

Stairs lead down to the hotel, NO DISABLED ACCESS.

However! The room's are nice, White Company products and freeview on the Tv. Comfortable and nice, but noisy.

Enjoy your stay, and please take our advise: Book a higher room and take earplugs!

Decided on Rick's Place because the reviews/pictures I had seen seemed rather good. Booked through Mr and Mrs Smith. On arrival, the bar looked pleasant enough. The staff member who showed us to our room seemed bored and unfriendly, no offer to help with luggage. The room (no.5) was nicely decorated but beginning to look scruffy - the door was difficult to close, carpet a bit stained and there were knocks in the furniture, but generally it was ok and clean, though overpriced for what it was. Service in the morning for breakfast was the worst I have ever experienced; it took 20 minutes to get served, my husband had to fetch a staff member, even though it was fairly quiet. The man who served us didn't speak good English and wasn't very professional, we had no menu to choose from. Breakfast, when it arrived, was poor - the bread was stale, the potato cake burned. Other people were complaining about theirs. When we checked out, we were not asked it we had enjoyed our stay. We didn't & definitely won't be back. Poor value.