firstly, we arrived at 2pm to check in, only to find a sign on the door saying reception is closed until 5pm, come back then or phone our receptionist on this number, it was freezing outside so we called and called, no answer, when we returned at 5pm to check in the man had no idea about how much we owed, said he was too busy to answer his phone and then gave us the keys to the wrong room resulting in us walking in on a poor girl getting changed.

The free wifi is probably the only decent thing about this place, its old and scungy filled with a not very nice atmosphere, we locked ourselves in our room most of the time. The housekeeper was extremely rude and kicked us out of the showers because she wanted to clean them. When trying to pay the receptionist had to call 2 different people to find out how to use the credit card machine and how much we needed to pay, despite us showing him our booking confirmation with the balance owing on it.

We found our room freezing. The duvet was very thin and some of the duvets were not long enough to cover a full person. We stayed Friday and Saturday night and found the noise of the "locals" outside hard to block out. The staff were pleasant and helpful.

We had a reservation with hostlelworld.com/ryanair. They gave us a tiny room in a private sort of guesthouse with no staff to keep the other guests, that were noisy teenagers, in check: it was quite far from the central location (in the busy uphill road in front of Inverness castle), the shared shower didn't work, found lots of somebody's hair in the uncomfty bed, the door didn't work properly, we couldn't even left the luggage for a couple of hours after checking out, unless it was in the shared bathroom. Just avoid it's really miserable.

I stayed here for three nights in January 2010. Staff did not have my reservation (although, in all fairness, I had booked the place the night before). The hostel itself is up two flights of winding stairs; keep this in mind if you've got heavy luggage. They only take cash, but require your credit card information (which I'm starting to wonder if I should have given). My bed in a private double room had hairs on it from the prior occupant. Wi-fi in the common room was NOT working more often than it was working; same goes for the TV (nobody could figure out how to turn the TV on). The hostel was relatively quiet (except for the first night, when I assume the entire floor heard the looooong conversation of a drunk couple breaking up). Staff was friendly. Rooms were warm. The shared bathrooms seemed clean enough (no en-suite rooms available). Overall there seemed to be nothing absolutely horrible about the place, but nothing great either. You get what you pay for--my advice would be to definitely pay a little more and look elsewhere.