Hotels Near Edinburgh Zoo & Corstorphine (2026)

Under five minutes to the gate. Two places sit this close, a big chain hotel and a small guest house, and for most families the guest house's age rule makes the choice for them. Holiday Inn Edinburgh is the 303-room block at 132 Corstorphine Road, next door to the zoo (the zoo calls it a two-minute walk; Google's route to the gate says four), and it brings together what nowhere else in Corstorphine offers under one roof: a 13-metre heated indoor pool with a sauna, free parking, a lift, a Starbucks on site and 24-hour room service. The family rooms pair a double with two single sofa beds for four, connecting rooms exist, and a cot comes on request. The hotel's own wording is 'kids stay and eat free', and breakfast runs 6:30am to 10am. Off-peak the cheapest double is about £182 a night room only and the family room about £202, or £217 with breakfast; a bus stop 3 minutes away puts Princes Street about 21 minutes off door to door.

The catch is the car park. There are 80 spaces for 303 rooms, first come, first served, and when they're full you park in the zoo's car park next door: the hotel's page says guests pay the zoo £4 a day for the 10am to 5pm window, though the zoo's own public rate is now £5, so budget for either. Standard rooms start at 11 square metres, and one Google reviewer's verdict, 'The room was a bit dated and the carpet could probably be changed but it wasn't dirty or anything', is about the size of it. It's a 3.9 on Google across more than 3,000 reviews, which reads as reliable rather than loved. Pool slots have to be booked by email with the health club. If you're arriving by car with children and want a swim after the zoo, none of that will stop you, and it shouldn't. Rugby weekends at Murrayfield push the price up; see the hotels near Murrayfield guide for how much.

Dalmore Lodge Guest House is the closest bed of all: a Victorian villa at 14 Downie Terrace, directly across Corstorphine Road from the zoo entrance, 45 metres and one minute on foot, with the 26 and 31 stopping at the door. Five en-suite rooms (a double, two twins, two triples with a double and a single), a self-service continental breakfast of toast, cereal and yoghurt included, and two parking spaces at the back. It's the budget pick for a couple or a family with teenagers: through the booking sites, a twin with breakfast was about £135 a night for a Tuesday in late October and a triple £160, and the 4.5 Google rating is earned by a homely, leave-you-alone kind of stay.

Read the rules before you book. Only children aged 12 and over are accepted and there are no cots, which takes it off the table for most zoo trips. Check-in is by door code with nobody at a desk (the owner is on the phone), the latest arrival is 10pm, and the guest house changed hands after going on the market in 2024, so older reviews describing the previous hosts don't tell you much. There's no website; book through the usual sites or phone 07940 846515. Corstorphine Road is a main road and the front rooms hear it, so ask for the garden side.

Corstorphine village, 12 to 18 minutes' walk. St John's Road is the A8 as it passes through Corstorphine, with a Sainsbury's, a Tesco, chip shops and pubs along it, and three places to stay within a few doors of each other. My pick of them for a family is Innkeeper's Collection Edinburgh, Corstorphine, the rooms above the Toby Carvery on St John's Road, 13 minutes' walk from the zoo gate. A double is about £146 a night advance purchase (£162 flexible), the Family Room with a double bed and a double sofa bed is about £167, parking is free, and a travel cot fits, though you should ask the hotel to provide one. The reason it wins on value is breakfast: the all-you-can-eat buffet is £6.99 on weekdays at the bar, a children's breakfast £5.49 and a baby bowl 99p for under-2s, which makes the £16 breakfast-inclusive rate for two a bad deal. The 26 and 31 stop on St John's Road; Princes Street is about 20 minutes door to door.

It's a carvery with rooms, so dinner is roast meat and a Yorkshire pudding or a walk to something else, and the rooms are clean chain rooms rather than characterful ones. The sofa bed is for children under 16 only, the hotel allows two adults per room at most, no dogs, and reception closes at 10pm with no promise of getting in later. One recent reviewer found a room airless in the heat because the windows barely open. For a family that wants a car park, a big breakfast and a fair price a quarter of an hour from the zoo, it's the sensible choice, and 4.2 on Google agrees.

The White Lady is the Wetherspoon hotel at 92 to 98 St John's Road, 12 minutes' walk from the zoo gate, and the cheapest proper hotel room in Corstorphine: a standard double is about £120 a night non-flexible (£133 fully flexible), a room for three with a sofa bed for an under-16 about £129, and a room for four with a double and two singles about £147. There are 30 rooms, five of them family rooms, free parking (limited), a 24-hour reception and the pub downstairs for breakfast, which is bought separately and served until noon. The hotel itself points you to the 12, 26 and 31, which it says run 24 hours a day; Princes Street is about 22 minutes door to door.

You get what a Wetherspoon hotel is: clean, plain, cheap, and above a pub that's open until midnight most nights and 1am from Thursday to Saturday, with under-18s allowed in it only until 10pm. There's no lift, so every room is up stairs, and the frontage faces a busy road. The 4.2 Google rating is mostly for the pub, not the rooms. Ask for a room away from the front; one reviewer asked for a quiet room and got one. If the Innkeeper's is full or you'd rather spend £25 or so less and eat in the pub, it's fine.

The Torfin at 108 St John's Road is the couples' option on this stretch: four themed bedrooms above a good bar and grill (4.4 on Google across more than a thousand reviews, almost all of them for the food), 12 minutes' walk from the zoo gate. The rooms have king or double beds, 40-inch TVs and monsoon showers, dogs are welcome for a £15 cleaning charge, and downstairs does cocktails, a Sunday roast and rugby on the screens. The hotel publishes no room rates and takes bookings by phone or email; through the booking sites a Deluxe Double was £153 and a Deluxe King £165 for a Tuesday in late October. Princes Street is about 21 minutes by bus door to door.

It is not a family stay, and it doesn't pretend to be. Doubles and kings only, two people a room, no cots, no twin, and breakfast is a breakfast roll from the bar after 10am rather than a cooked plate at 8. The bar runs to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays with live-music pre-parties some nights, and the rooms are up the stairs above it. Parking isn't mentioned on its site. For two adults who want the best dinner and the best pint on St John's Road under the same roof, book it; for a zoo trip with children, look next door.

Corstorphine Lodge Hotel is the one people search for by name: a three-star Victorian villa from the 1880s at 188 St John's Road, at the far west end of the village, 18 minutes' walk from the zoo gate. What it does well is space and price. A double was about £119 a night non-refundable for Tuesday 20 October (with a two-night minimum on that date), £149 flexible or £139 with breakfast, and the bigger rooms are genuinely big: a Quadruple for four at £159 and a Family Suite for five at £179, both on the ground or first floor, with cots available. The hotel says buses into the centre run roughly every five minutes from the stop outside, and Google makes Princes Street about 24 minutes door to door.

Three honest problems. There's no car park at all; the hotel offers free street parking nearby and says plainly it can't guarantee it, which is a real gap on a page about driving to the zoo. There's no lift, and rooms on the upper floors are stairs only. And the 3.8 Google rating tracks the reviews: huge, clean rooms that need updating, with the occasional complaint about a damaged quilt or a hot room. Family rooms also take a 50% non-refundable deposit at booking, and breakfast has to be ordered at check-in. If you don't have a car and want a big family room for less than the Holiday Inn, it makes sense; if you do have a car, it doesn't.

Further out: a car park and a pool. Two hotels beyond the walking ring are worth knowing about, one for comfort and one for its pool. The Murrayfield Hotel is the nicest bed on the Corstorphine Road corridor: a 44-room independent at 18 Corstorphine Road, 23 minutes' walk east of the zoo gate or a short ride on the 12, 26 or 31, with The Bothy, its own pub and restaurant with a beer garden and a children's menu, downstairs. A Classic Double is about £174 a night off-peak, advance purchase, using the BOOKDIRECT code on the hotel's own booking page (£205 flexible), and the same room was £153 for a Tuesday in mid-November. The Family Room sleeps four, as two doubles or a double and two singles if you ask, at about £279. Parking is free but can't be reserved, and Princes Street is about 20 minutes by bus door to door.

The building has two floors and no lift, so every upstairs room means stairs, and the Family Room isn't listed with a cot (some of the smaller room types are), so ask before you assume. Breakfast is £15 a head in The Bothy with no children's price, and the Family Room was already gone for a mid-November Tuesday, so book it early. The location is Murrayfield rather than the zoo, which cuts both ways: quieter and leafier, but on Scotland rugby weekends the hotel roughly doubles its rate and asks for two nights, as the hotels near Murrayfield guide sets out. Outside those weekends, for a couple or a family with older children who'd trade four minutes to the gate for a proper pub and garden, it's the one I'd book.

Leonardo Hotel Edinburgh Murrayfield is not in Murrayfield. It's the 111-room hotel at 187 Clermiston Road on the north side of Corstorphine Hill, the hill the zoo climbs, which puts it 29 minutes' walk from the zoo gate by road. It earns its place for two things: about 100 free parking spaces, and a 17-metre indoor pool with a sauna, steam room and gym that guests use free, with a slot booked through reception. A standard double is about £140 a night non-refundable (£155 flexible), with the visitor levy already inside the price, and the family room with a double bed and bunk beds for two adults and two children about £174. Breakfast is £14.95 if you ask for the voucher the day before, £16.95 on the day.

The trade-off is the hill and the distance. The hotel's own directions say the 26 bus from a stop three minutes away takes 20 minutes into the city; Google's Tuesday-morning routing made it 42 minutes door to door, so treat it as a drive-or-bus base rather than a walk-anywhere one. The one lift serves only the first and second floors, missing the third floor and the lower-ground leisure club, which matters with a buggy. It's corporate in feel, a business hotel that happens to have a pool, and one Google reviewer's verdict, 'quite corporate in style but very clean and well presented', is about right. If a swim after the zoo is the priority and the Holiday Inn is full or too dear, this is the other pool; if you want to walk to the gate, it isn't the hotel.