St Columba Hotel

yes

Hotel room was clean and comfortable. Weather was cold and rainy but room was warm and inviting. The dining room service and food were excellent. Location is convenient to all important sites on the island.

This is a wonderful hotel, great location to access everything on Iona, staff clearly enjoy working there, as nothing was too much trouble and shared lots of local knowledge and lovely warm hospitality. Really helpful to have concierge to help with bags up from the ferry. The hotel lounge is just as enjoyable as seeing the island as it looks across the water and so you can just breathe in the view. Food was high standard and lovely they have a kitchen garden so lots of fresh organic materials. Rooms spacious and beautiful decorated and dressed so it feels luxurious. Using lovely Scottish toiletries was a nice touch. I wished I could have stayed longer.

The hotel is situated right next door to the abbey, and the whole island is walkable from there. The hotel has a beautiful food garden that is at least a few acres, and guests are free to walk in the organic garden, I found this very peaceful. Staff were all very helpful, picked up my bags at the ferry, which was welcome. The hotel is very comfortable with large lounge areas, which led to lots of interaction with other guests, adding to the pleasure.

Due to other reviews, I had high hopes in booking this hotel. Sadly, I absolutely cannot recommend this hotel. Due to a storm, ferries to the island were canceled so we were unable to arrive on our initial check-in day. I called the hotel to see what could be done about our 3 nt reservation. The front desk manager said the booking platform had a strict no cancelation policy. Yet, when I called the booking platform, the rep said the decision was fully the hotel's to make. The next day, there was a very short window where we were able to get to Iona for just a few hours (return ferries were predicted to be canceled the next day as well- and sure enough, they were). I went to the hotel to see if I could talk to someone in person. The front desk manager was so rude and patronizing when I explained the situation- and referred me back to the cancelation policy he said was listed on the hotel's website. There is NO cancelation policy listed on the hotel's website. And the cancelation information on the booking platform states that a refund is possible in case of cancelation. Dishonesty is NOT great customer service! In addition, the hotel manager stated that ferries are often canceled- if this is the case, why is there no information for guests regarding what to do in this case??? Room rates for this hotel are really high. Not only did we lose what we pre-paid for the hotel- we had to pay for another hotel off island. Potential guests be warned!!