Crowne Plaza Manchester City Centre, Manchester

Author's product rating:   

Value for Money
Quality of Rooms
Standard of Service
Quality of Facilities

Advantages:	Excellent food, spotlessly clean, leisure facilities, central location
Disadvantages:	rates can be high, no on site parking

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

As some of you know, recently I have been travelling a fair bit, and when I do this with work I have a budget to work to, and am very prudent when it comes to spending it – to the point that I only claim what I have spent rather than my full subsistence level – so, coming to the end of my travelling for the time being, I decided that if I was getting grief to claim it then I may as well spend it.

My first destination was Manchester, and normally this is done in fine budget style which have seen me take in the windowless walls of the Britannia, the 6 foot beds and tatty walls, DIY ironing boards of the GMEX 2 PremierLodge, the 'no room to swing a cat' of the Thistle, and the, you can only have a special rate if you share a room with someone else of the Jarvis Piccadilly – so what stories did Ciao have to tell on Manchester outlets?

A quick browse found little I really fancied, except a listing for the Midland Hotel Crowne Plaza – well saves me the hassle of trying to get it listed, I set about getting myself a room there.

LOCATION
Adjacent to GMEX and the Manchester Conference centre, about 5 minutes walk from the tram hub at Piccadilly gardens, 10 minutes walk from Piccadilly and Oxford road train stations, it is about 5 minutes drive from Mancunian way, 10 minutes from the Arndale centre and 2 minutes from Granada studios – in reality you couldn’t ask for anything more convenient. It is also about 2 minutes from china town, so if you fancy a change and don’t fancy eating in the hotel, there is plenty around to tickle your fancy from every combination of Chinese to Indian, to Italian to good old pizza hut and McDonalds, you really are spoilt for choice.

BOOKING
First was a visit to their website (http://manchester-themidland.crowneplaza.com/) where the cheapest room I could find was £139 B&B with no cancellation facility if for some reason I didn’t travel – uh oh – this was not going to be easy – with three stopovers this week alone, MBA results in between and Ibiza in just over week followed swiftly by graduation, not really an amount I wanted to stump up. A quick check on Active Hotels found nothing and Laterooms were offering around £90 B&B, so my hopes of staying here were quickly being dashed. I know, what a novel idea, I shall ring the hotel direct – BINGO – one nights B&B accommodation - £79 – I must confess at this point I didn’t ask about cancellation policy, I just booked it.

ARRIVAL
The Midland Hotel Crowne Plaza backs onto GMEX and the Manchester Conference centre and does not have its own car-parking – the concierge will park your car for you, however, trying to find somewhere to actually stop in front of the main entrance in Peter Street is something of a lottery – DON’T use the Taxi rank of you could leave reception witnessing your pride and joy being carted off by the local ‘clamp-it’people, or if you are really lucky, jammed in by two taxis – a little tip – there is a small unloading layby at the rear of the hotel with parking for around 5 cars, there is also some on-street metered parking if you want to leave the car a short time whilst you check in and off-load the keys and luggage and check-in. The Midland Crowne Plaza has a special deal with the GMEX NCP car-park of £8 per day – this is much better than the deal the Thistle have with their closest car-park of £12 per day – if you park anywhere else in any of the other NCP car-parks you will pay upwards of £13 per day – straight overnight parking from around 9pm onwards is a mere £5 through NCP.

RECEPTION
WOW – what can I say, was it a taste of things to come? A very, very grand affair with high ceilings and plush carpets, a bar to the left, concierge and reception to the right. Check-in understandably required the swift swipe of the credit card and then I was allocated my room – third floor overlooking the front of GMEX.

THE ROOM
Crowne Plaza claim self controlled air-conditioning, although in Prague we were informed that it does not churn out cool air in the winter – it took me a few minutes to work it out, I thought initially I had been given a room with no power – but there is actually a master switch right by the front door.

The bedroom was spacious with a desk area, several telephones, one by the bed, one on the desk, TV, automated mini-bar (beware of these I have heard of colleagues looking in the mini-bar and then being charged for products they have ‘had’ when in fact the drinks have simply been moved – you could be requested to bring everything you have supposedly not drunk down to reception – drinks in here weren’t too bad - £3 for a bottle of Grolsch - £4.95 for a double gin. You also received two mint chocolates and a bottle of fizzy water complements of the management.

Tea and coffee making facilities were present, as were a trouser press, iron and ironing board. TV was a standard combination of terrestrial, Sky Sports and radio channels – and you could hire videos for £7.50 per film.

There was a dressing area which housed a chest of drawers and a cupboard – there was no safe in the room which is a little disappointing for a hotel of this standard. All the furniture was of a solid dark Oak effect, none of your MFI rubbish here.

The en-suite was a half size bath, fixed power shower (I say fixed because hotels seem to forget midgets when they are putting these in), toilet and sink – and unlike my experiences in Glasgow, Preston and Edinburgh, no brown water here.

Towels were supplied in abundance and were huge, more than sufficient to cover my ample frame.

LEISURE FACILITIES
At a hotel claiming 4 star status, you could comfortably expect it to have complementary leisure facilities and it did. A small swimming pool with a maximum depth of 5ft , but sufficiently wide enough to have a swim, a Jacuzzi (or spa as it was rather elegantly called) with a temperature of between 36 – 40 degrees you are recommended not to stay in it for longer than 10 minutes – actually you can’t as it has an automatic cut-out switch, although I must confess I didn’t particularly want to – it was hot. There are a number of seats and loungers around the pool where you can sit and while away the time with a good book.

Both sets of changing rooms have saunas and individual shower cubicles – and towels are supplied for your troubles. There is an extensive range of gym equipment including bikes, treadmills and weights – a visit if not a resident in the hotel will set you back £7.

THE BAR
After a leisurely swim, retire to the bar where you will be glared at for looking a right scruff bag – particularly if you have a mane like mine which requires careful attention when wet – service is to the table, there are a small number of non-smoking tables and a half lager will set you back £1.50, a pint £2.90 and a double Gordons Gin - £4.25 – surprisingly the other gins were dearer.

FOOD
Take your pick from a French restaurant, Nicos or room service – for the first time ever, in the interest of my fellow ciao’ers (and the fact that I had a presentation to finish) I elected for room service – a Chicken Tikka masalla and rice set me back £11.95 accompanied by garlic mushrooms and a double Gordons and tonic cost £21 – beautifully served and arranged for me – there was even an after eight mint to keep me going – the Masalla was unusual in that it was a complete breast of chicken rather than chunks – served with a salad garnish and two poppadoms – it was very tasty.

BREKKIE – my goodness what can I say – it puts every single other hotel I have stayed in to shame – it was serve yourself – and consisted of every type of fruit imaginable – cereals in abundance, yoghurts, coffee, tea, toast, bacon, sausage, black pudding, beans, scrambled eggs, fried egg on a muffin, mushrooms, hash browns, bread rolls, cold meats, cheeses, and boiled eggs, it was absolutely scrumptious and very hot, as were the plates.

Breakfast if not included in your room rate will set you back £15.75 per person, although children up to 19 staying in their parents room do eat brekkie for free.

INTERNET
I mention this separately as herein I encountered my one and only problem with the Midland Hotel Crowne Plaza – the hotel claims all rooms have internet access charged at 30p per minute (I have encountered worse), freephone numbers are just that, free. I have a standard connection for my laptop, and normally I can get this operational simply by plugging it into the phone socket – however, each time I connected their phone system disconnected.

The book said I could obtain a free RJ11 plug from reception which links in through the phone – reception couldn’t help me and simply offered me the opportunity to move rooms, or connect my laptop to the computers in the business centre which had ADSL internet connections (use of this facility is free for guests), as my food was just arriving I elected to say I would come back to them, needless to say I voiced my displeasure. Halfway through the meal, they rang to say they had found a connector and from there on in I managed to connect to collect my e-mails – reception did try to charge me for the disconnected calls – but I soon put them straight on this one.

PRICES
I have saved this until last to quash the gulps of horror from Deano – standard rack rate per room would set you back £165 per night, £195 for an executive room and between £500 - £600 for a suite (yes per night not per week) – the internet offers a range of rates depending on what you are prepared to stomach – they do offer special 21 day in advance rates, but these bookings cannot be cancelled or modified, the lowest rate I could get on the internet was £139 – so again, as when I stayed in The Titherington Hall in Stafford, the good old fashioned method of contacting the hotel can come up trumps sometimes.

Total cost for my stay, including car-parking charges, internet calls, Bed, Breakfast, evening meal and car-parking was £116.

SUMMARY
Would I stay there again? Without a shadow of doubt, this is good service personified and an example to many hotels on how guests should be treated, an excellent location, air conditioned rooms, spotlessly clean, superb food and excellent service – that said, would I pay £139 per room – a resounding NO – no hotel is worth paying that for – at the end of the day, it is a bed – would I stomach up to £100 – probably.

And don’t forget, if you are staying here or any of the other six continent hotels (including the HI Express for those at the Bristol meet) you can get yourself a Priority Club Card where you can earn points towards free/reduced price stays in any of their outlets – I again found myself without my card, but the hotel were quite willing to credit my account on production of my account number.

WANT TO FIND OUT MORE FOR YOURSELF?
Crowne Plaza Manchester - The Midland
Peter Street
Manchester
M60 2DS
United Kingdom
Tel: 0161 236 3333

http://manchester-themidland.crowneplaza.com

I have given it a good rather than excellent for the simple reason of the prices.

I have just also realised in my hurry to get the op posted that I have placed it in the wrong category- this is for the restaurant rather than the hotel - I did ask Ciao to move it but seems they weren't listening.

Sue