100 Princes Street

Red Carnation Hotels opened its first Scottish property in April 2024, converting the former Royal Overseas League headquarters on Princes Street into a 30-room boutique hotel facing Edinburgh Castle. The project, delayed twice from an original 2022 target, was fitted out by the design team behind Ashford Castle and Xigera Safari Lodge, pairing a private-members'-club atmosphere with a wine and whisky wall running to 200 bottles.

The place

100 Princes Street occupies a prime stretch of Edinburgh's main thoroughfare, directly opposite Edinburgh Castle and a short walk from the National Gallery of Scotland and the Princes Street Gardens. The building previously served as the headquarters of the Royal Overseas League, a private members' club, before Red Carnation acquired and restored it as its debut Scottish address. The location places guests within the New Town's core commercial and cultural strip, at the meeting point of the city's Georgian grid and the Old Town skyline across the gardens — a vantage point the hotel leans on heavily in its own marketing.

The concept

The restoration and interiors were overseen by Toni Tollman, Philippe Bonino and Brian Brennan, the same team responsible for Red Carnation's Ashford Castle in Ireland and Xigera Safari Lodge in Botswana. Their brief drew explicitly on the building's former life as a private club, aiming for the intimacy of Red Carnation's Hotel 41 in London rather than the scale of a conventional city-centre luxury hotel. A five-storey staircase carries a hand-painted mural by Croxford and Saunders depicting Scottish explorers and botanists, while guest rooms feature bespoke furnishings and five tartans designed by Scottish textile designer Araminta Campbell. Two signature suites, the Archibald and the Isobel, are named after explorers Archibald Menzies and Isobel Wylie Hutchison and look directly onto the castle. At 30 keys, the hotel is deliberately small for its category and location, positioning it as an exclusive retreat rather than a high-volume address. The opening had a long runway: plans were first revealed in 2019, an April 2022 launch slipped to November 2023, and the hotel ultimately opened in spring 2024 — a delay consistent with the scale of restoring a listed former club building in a conservation-sensitive stretch of the city.

Dining & wellness

Food and drink centre on The Wallace, a dining room, bar and lounge serving Scottish produce under chef Willhelm Maree, and Ghillie's Pantry, a private dining room seating up to twelve guests alongside a display of more than one hundred whiskies as part of a wider wine-and-whisky wall of over 200 labels. The hotel also curates guest experiences beyond its own rooms, including personalised Scottish gin blending and fishing excursions on the River Tweed. No spa or pool has been reported at the property.