Dakota Edinburgh

A massive black box, The Dakota Edinburgh looms over the surrounding Ferrymuir Retail Park (10 minutes from Edinburgh Airport) like the sci-fi fortress of a very style-conscious planetary dictator. Do not despair. No dark lord lurks within this futuristic shell. Instead, you'll find staff who are quite puppyishly eager to please – their every other word seems to be 'perfect' or 'fantastic'. Public areas sport design accents intended to evoke a vanished age of aviation. There's an artful, retro, post-industrial vibe at work, with a lots of leather, chrome, exposed brickwork and exposed ceiling ducts and lighting gantries. Lifts are lined with pale ostrich hide and there are retro touches like big leather-topped desks in bedrooms too. But there's nothing old fashioned about the vast flatscreen TV, USB charging ports and free WiFi, or the big beds with their high-thread-count sheets and hypoallergenic pillows, or the big drench showers. Decor is shades of grey (at least six, from dove to charcoal), and the bathrobes are grey too. Back at ground level, the grill restaurant is an oasis (and it needs to be – the immediate vicinity is a culinary desert). The menu is big on surf and turf, mostly from Scottish sources. Breakfast is robust, with cooked-to-order treats including kippers and Arbroath smokies complementing a continental buffet. Perhaps not a place for more than one night, but the Dakota Edinburgh knocks the spots off most airport and just-off-the-motorway hotels, so it's perfect for the night before an early morning flight, or after a late arrival.