Inverness Airport to River Ness Hotel by Bus

Dear rsleeman
Have you looked at google maps to actually visualise the journey to your hotel? If you pinpoint your hotel on a map you will see it is in the centre of Inverness. There are several different Stagecoach bus services that can bring you from the airport to the city centre. Services 1, 10A and M96 being the main ones that I am seeing looking at a live journey for a random day next week. Service 1 goes to Queensgate which is very close the bus station and the others both go to the bus station. From the bus station it is less than a 5 minute walk to your hotel.

The buses have different journey durations because they all take slightly different routes to the city centre, with multiple stops on the way.

Here is a link to the journey planner. The simplest thing to do it use the planner to find the right bus for your time of departure from the airport.

I should say that Rome to Rio is really unreliable and I would caution against using it at all.

I hope this helps.

Jacqui (Skyegirl)

Are you taking the RS Heart of Scotland tour? If so, I was on this tour August 2-9 and we took a taxi from the Inverness airport to the River Ness Hotel. Easy and not too expensive. We absolutely loved this tour!
I wrote a trip report and will try to attach the link.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/rs-heart-of-scotland-trip-report-whisky-bagpipes-and-sheepdogs

By the way, if your guide is Paul, you have won the lottery! He is a fantastic guide and a good bloke.

The former Route 11 has been renumbered as Route 1, in a general rearrangement of Inverness area bus services.

So Rome 2 Rio has even older information, which will date back a number of years, probably several bus service revisions ago.

We were on the RS 8-day tour of Scotland in May, and took a taxi from the airport to the River Ness Hotel for about $35. The info we got with our tour information is as follows: EDIT: Bus info is out of date and I've deleted it that portion, see isn31c's post below for updated info:

Inverness International Airport to River Ness Hotel
By Bus -- [portion deleted]. Get off at the Inverness bus station; the hotel is a five-minute walk away.
With your back to the public library, head straight down Margaret Street. Turn left onto Academy Street, then
take the next right onto Post Office Avenue (side street just past the Black Isle Hostel). Continue straight to
the other end of the street and take the first right onto Church Street; the hotel is on the left at #83-97.

By Taxi -- An official taxi costs around £30-40 (depending on the time of day) and takes about 20 minutes to reach the hotel.

You can also inquire at the information desk at the airport. They were very helpful. I think we were on the last flight into the airport (about 10:00 pm), and our checked bag was almost the last one out, and when we went out to the taxi rank there were no cabs. We asked at the desk and they called for more cabs (there were a few other people waiting as well).

Our guide for the tour was Helen. She was excellent.

The above is out of date RS information. As stated the bus is now route #1 . The fare is not £7, but £2 as is every bus in the Scottish Highlands under the fare cap.
The route 1 from the airport terminal is now hourly, but there are extra buses (the M96 from Aberdeen) (and trains) from the Airport Railway Station.

In the evening it is route 10A from Aberdeen, not route 1. The last bus from the airport is at midnight.

At the same time as the route number changed, in the other direction, the bus was extended to Fort George.