Forte Travelodge Manchester, Manchester

Having treated my husband to tickets for WWE's Monday Night Raw Live at Manchester Evening News Arena (MENA), it came about that I'd also have to book accomodation as we didn't want to drive back late at night. After a great experience of Travelodge in Oxford, I decided that, as we were only staying one night in Manchester, a Travelodge was ideal.

I booked our room thorugh the Travelodge website, there was a choice of 3 hotels in and ...
...MENA, so at a rate of £50 per room, per night, I decided to book a double, non smoking room. Using the web booking was easy and no payment needed to be taken at the time of booking, a credit or debit card number plus personal details and a home address was all that was needed to secure a booking. My booking was quickly confirmed by e-mail along with a reservation number that could be used to amend or cancel my booking on the Travelodge website. So ... more

Having treated my husband to tickets for WWE's Monday Night Raw Live at Manchester Evening News Arena (MENA), it came about that I'd also have to book accomodation as we didn't want to drive back late at night. After a great experience of Travelodge in Oxford, I decided that, as we were only staying one night in Manchester, a Travelodge was ideal.

I booked our room thorugh the Travelodge website, there was a choice of 3 hotels in and around Manchester City Centre, this one being the closest to MENA, so at a rate of £50 per room, per night, I decided to book a double, non smoking room. Using the web booking was easy and no payment needed to be taken at the time of booking, a credit or debit card number plus personal details and a home address was all that was needed to secure a booking. My booking was quickly confirmed by e-mail along with a reservation number that could be used to amend or cancel my booking on the Travelodge website. So that was it, room booked so we just waited for November to come around to actually go.

Then it came, 13th November and we were off to Manchester. The Travelodge is situated quiet centrally, minutes from the Arndale centre, train stations and easily accessible by road. A bit plus for us was that this Travelodge advertised itself on the website as having 'ample' car parking underneath the hotel at a rate of £5 per day, excellent. Check in was at 3pm, so after a bit of shopping and a spot of lunch, we arrive at the Travelodge at 2.55pm. The car park was situated the one side of the building and immediately we could see that this wasn't an 'ample' car park at all, it was, small and held a maximum of 20 cars. This wasn't the greatest blow though as there is a handy NCP car park next door but charges £13 per 24 hours, not cheap but not as expensive as one car park we saw, which was £30 per 24 hours. We parked in the NCP next door and arrived at the hotel at 3:10pm to be greeted by people queuing out the door for reception!

So, after joining the queue of about 12 families in front, it became obvious that this Travelodge suffered from chronic understaffing,there was one harrassed member of staff behind the desk, one trying to the fill the vending machines whilst also managing the bar and helping guests. We were also disgusted to note a manager being incredibly rude to the 2 members of staff telling them to keep their 'bums in gear' without stopping to offer help.

The reception area was clean and there were plnty of chairs and tables to sit don at, some at coffee table height and some at proper dining level. The reception also contained a cash machine (charge for useage) and drink and food vending machines. A small bar is located to the far end of the hotel and was open 5pm-1am and served food until 10pm from a limited menu.

After some 25 minutes in the queue, someone who has getting as impatient as us found the manager in the bararea and asked him if he would help on the reception desk as they were in a hurry to get elsewhere. The manager id agree and he started serving guests. After a few more minutes, we were served by the other male receptionist who was very polite, found our booking easily, took payment and asked if we wanted purchase an all you can eat breakfast for £6.50. We'd actually hoped that the breakfast bags would be available here, they consisted of ceral, croissants, coffee and juice and were left outside your door but after enquiring, were told Travelodge no longer offer these. We were then given our room cards and allocated to our non smoking room on th fifth floor.

We took the lifts to floor 5. The lifts were clean and the lift areas were bright and fairly clean too. Our room was located towards the end of the corridor.

We initially found the corridor smelt very strongly of cigarette smoke which we found odd because they floor was supposed to be non-smoking. We weren't overly bothered but it may have been a problem for some guests. On entering our room, we ere firstly very pleased, the room was actually a family room, a double bed and 2 double sofa beds with huge proportions and a nice view over Manchester, then the problems started. We immediately found that the room as incredibly cold, the window had been left open, obviously to freshen it out after the last guest. Andrew then treid to close the window...and tried...and tried, then I tried and the window refused to budge. We were facing a main road and there was a lot of traffice noise so we went to reception to ask for it to be fixed.

We both went to reception and found ourselves in another hefty queue of people. Both the manager and receptionist were serving. This time, we spoke to the manager who wouldn't lift his eyes from his PC and spoke almost as if on autpilot. He agreed to get someone to fix the window 'sometime' but then moved us to the room 2 doors up. We were happy enough with this and duly returned to the fifth floor to move rooms.

Upon entering the new room, we were shocked, the bed a was untidy, not unmade but almost as if someone had laid on the bed. That wasn't the only problem, the room needed a good vacuum round and then to our horror there was a big hole in the wall from the bedroom into the bathroom in addiotn, their windows didn't shut either. Shocked and angry, I returned to reception who said that we could move back into our first room but there was no other rooms available. I wasn't happy since the first room was noisey, cold and really wasn't going to provide a comfortable nights sleep but at least it was slightly better than this room, so we moved back. The Manager apologised, half-heartedly and, whilst still glued to his PC, offered us breakfast vouchers as compensation. As we'd already bought these, he then said 'oh, if you come and see me in the morning, I'll give you a discount on the room'. I agreed to see him after breakfast in the morning.

Back to our room, we had only 1 pillow on the bed but as I don't use a pillow this wasn't a problem. There were tea and coffee and a kettle provided and a TV. In out bathroom there was bath, shower over, sink and toilet. The bathroom floor was dirty only one towel was provided and the sink and bath were both scummy round the edges but as one saving grace, there was plenty of toilet roll.

The room itself was very large and contained an open plan wardrobe and shelves, dresser and 2 full length mirrors. In my opinion the decor of the room was dates, painted terracotta but drastcially in need of repainting or repairing. As we didn't find the room particularly welcoming, we decided to leave to go out shortly after.

Upon arriving back at the hotel at 12:20am, we had to enter the hotel with our rooms keys to unlock the main door. In our room, we were unimpressed that the room was so cold and noisey and seemed even more so than earlier, so we stuffed it with the curtain. It wasn't ideal but we managed to get to sleep until about 8am.

We left our room at 8:30am for breakfast and we noticed that some guests had breakfast bags outside their rooms, the very ones we had been told were not available anymore. The buffet breakfast was served in the bar area. This in itself was a problem as most of the tables were tall tables or stools to use the window sill as a table, which isn't particularly my idea of fun, high jumping to a table first thing. However, we did get a 'normal' table after 15 minutes.

The buffet breakfast consisted of cereals, breads, croissants, orange juice, hot drinks and a hot selection of bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns, beans, mushrooms and tomatoes. When we arrived, there was no hot food available, it had run out and was being cooked and would be ready shortly. We helped ourselves to cereal and toast in the meantime. By 9:15am, still no hot food was available and some guests were damnding money back as they had places to be. 5 minutes later all the food arrived on trays and there was a hefty queue. All the food was well cooked and hot although not the tastiest cooked breakfast, it was adequate.

After, I went to the reception desk to see the manager about his promised room discount. I spoke to 'Khan', a very nice gentleman who informed me that the manager was not on duty that day and moreover, that he had not put any information on our room account to say that a discount could actioned. That day's duty manager was unavailable and the guest relations manager was off sick. This lovely chap said the hotel is always run like this, no-one takes responsibility and the floor we ere on is never normally opened as it is being refurbished and he apologised profusly for the stay we had had. It seemed that many other guest that we spoke to both at breakfast and around the hotel had had similar problems too.

At 10:30, we checked out at reception, no discount applied but a cheery farewell from Khan and a very easy exit.

We found this hotel really suffered because of the lack of staff and it tarnished the experience and indeed tarnished the view of Travelodge in my eyes. This particular hotel is ideally situated but it's far from ideal in any other way. Poor standard of cleanliness, some staff with a 'couldn't care less attitude' and a general sense of this hotel couldn't cope at full capcity. We were disappointed with the fact it was initially advertised as having 'ample' car parking, which was just blantantly misleading, I notice now that they have changed their website page to 'limited car parking' so this indicates that this may have been an issue with guests in the past.

Wouldn I recommend this Travelodge? No, although it was an ideal base for a stay in Manchester, it was a very disappointing experience. I'd recommend you'd stay in one of the other hotels in the area, as there is a wide range of budget hotels right up to expensive but avoid this one.

My Rating 3/10 

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