The Kirkwall Hotel

Great location, great shower, comfortable bed

The breakfast was expensive

Overall historical character

Convenient location for town and ferries. Helpful staff.

The lift and the restaurant.

Excellent location, food and friendly staff

Damaged shower made it’s use difficult

Staff were excellent, very helpful and friendly

Minor cleanliness improvement opportunity with bedroom carpet

Great location, excellent breakfast, clean. Staff super friendly and helpful.

Very well appointed , cosy and comfortable room. The bar and restaurant areas are very nicely styled creating a welcoming feel.

My stay was too short!!

We liked the location, breakfast, the room.

Overall everything was great. The dinner was ok, but not great. It would have been helpful if the staff at the reception gave us the information that you can see all the important sites by a day pass on the busses.

While I travel around a lot at present, I am more of a Air BnB type and don't stay in Hotel-type hotels very often However the terrible weather in January meant I had to travel on MJ Hjaltland from Aberdeen, arriving at 11 pm. Given the state of the roads, this meant I could not get over to Stromness that night, so I had booked a room at the Kirkwall Hotel at short notice, the same morning. I then made the mistake of walking from the Northland Ferry terminal into Kirkwall, with all the snow and slush this took at least an hour, resulting in me arriving well after midnight. But being a big hotel, they had an incredibly pleasant night clerk on duty who could not have been more kind or helpful. Good nights sleep then a really excellent breakfast - generous portions of tomatoes and mushrooms, and with the orange juice you're already at three portions of your five a day. All the other staff were great as well. And for filling in a survey, apparently I will get a £10 credit towards a meal, which I will use.

It is an old hotel and this is not a criticism, simply an observation. The room numbering is a bit idiosyncratic. However why should this be afault? It's an old hotel and should be entitled to do things it's way, the way things have always been.

Beautifully presented lots of history, restaurant was ace and the staff were all so friendly.

Rear facing rooms became very smelly from the kitchen if you left the windows open for air, however reception gave us a fan to stop having to open the window

Traditional Hotel which oozes character with well equipped modern rooms - restaurant is superb with a well stocked whisky bar

Fantastic location and rooms a very good size. Excellent showers

Great location friendly staff great restaurant

Staff lovely. Food very good. In the room the decor was fine and nice tea and coffee. Towels and shower all good. Bed comfy.

Room right opposite pub. Window open and so high up no way of closing. Pub shut at 1am but people still loud until 3am. Then cleaning vehicle at 6.30 am. So managed 3hours sleep. Hallways shabby and door to room very shabby and needing redecorating.

A beautiful hotel in a fantastic place. Kirkwall - and Orkney as a whole - are great, can’t recommend them enough and this is a great place to explore from. A warm welcome from the chap on reception, a good restaurant for evening meals - good breakfast too! The rooms are absolutely fantastic and the bathrooms even more amazing! Sooo recommend this hotel when staying on Orkney, not the cheapest but certainly one of the best.

The only small gripe was the lad behind the bar was on his phone all the time I was sat there and later on too, he wasn’t engaged with the people in the place at all - needs a kick up the…

Fantastic location and delightful hotel with a great restaurant. Room 314 was triple aspect with three good windows straight onto the fishing harbour. Masses of room and nice bathroom and accessories throughout. Comfortable bed. Restaurant food very nice - more choice would have been helpful as after two nights we had eaten everything we wanted to try. More seafood would be good - never saw lobster or crab listed on the menu. Scallops were huge and juicy and the best ever.

Cleaning of my suit (room 314) - WC was not cleaned and some old paper and a tablet was ere on the floor when we arrived and were not removed even after three days. TV in bedroom did not function - it would turn on but volume and channels could not be changed. We did not try sitting room one.Noisy young people in the early hours of Sunday morning after a Saturday night out disturbing our sleep. Loose manhole cover in street over which vehicles clattered forever!

Very nice looking hotel, looked more like a 4-star than a 3-star. The room and the bathroom were very nice and new-ish looking, and the fact that the hotel stands directly by the sea is also a plus. It's close to everywhere in the town. The restaurant was very good, too, we had a lovely dinner there and breakfasts were tasty as well. All the staff we met were very nice and helpful. There were no big issues with our stay.

The view was non-existent - actually we faced some sort of inner yard, where there was a window into the hall right across, so anyone could theoretically stare right into our room. We never saw anyone there and didn't spend that much time in the room anyway (and there were blinds), but still. Some features weren't working exactly as you'd expect - the windows were being closed/opened by reaching up with an umbrella handle. Yes, really. It's very high up the wall and there is simply no mechanism to close it by hand from the ground. There was a bottle of conditioner in the bathroom, but no shampoo. The card reader in the room door looked like someone carved it into the door by hand. Stuff like that - small issues, but I guess I wouldn't expect that from such a nice hotel. It would really improve the stay if they paid more attention to details like that.

A very nice ‘old world’ hotel which has been attractively redecorated. Comfy bed and good shower.

The room had a bit of smell from the kitchen below and people could be heard in adjoining rooms and stomping around above. But not a major problem. Also there was no hairdryer.

LocationBar and dining goodStaff were good

Elevators were not working throughout our stay of four nights Shower cubicle tiny affecting functional bathing