Mitre Hotel

...up, amongst others, with the Mitre Hotel.

I was intrigued by the description given of this place. It was described as being central, having thirty-two rooms and listing such amenities as cable/satellite TV, coffee/tea maker and designer toiletries. The price they wanted for a single room for the night was £55, room only. I was impressed. This sounded like just the place I was looking for. However, before I confirmed my booking I thought ...
...within ten minutes. When the Mitre described itself as being central they weren't kidding. I found it in a pedestrianised area plum next door to the cathedral within two minutes of the shopping centre, Victoria station and Deansgate, one of Manchester's main streets.
It's location could not have suited my needs better. As I had suspected the Mitre was also a pub, surprisingly small and filled with locals though giving off a good atmosphere. ... more

Back in June I was in Manchester to attend the Ciao meet up organised by Dempsey. As I was travelling from the South Coast I was going to need a place to stay for the night and having not visited the city for fourteen years was unsure as to where best it would be to go. I wasn't after anything luxurious, just somewhere clean, comfortable and central while not being too expensive.

Due to my leaving it somewhat late to make any booking and the fact that England were playing Jamaica that day at Old Trafford in their final warm up game before the World Cup I knew that my range of choice would be somewhat limited. However, as I logged on to Expedia I was confident that I would be able to find a room somewhere that charged a reasonable rate. Sure enough, many hotels in Manchester were already fully booked and none of those with rooms still available were coming cheap. As an arch capitalist who is a firm believer in the supply and demand philosophy I had no real objections to being charged over and above the normal rates though I was still against paying unnecessarily over the odds for just one night. The Britannia, for instance, a three star hotel close to Piccadilly in central Manchester where I had stayed on my previous visit, wanted around £100 for the night. A nice hotel the Britannia may be but cheap it certainly is not. I instructed Expedia to find me an available hotel rated three stars and above without specifying any specifics such as air conditioning and swimming facilities. It came up, amongst others, with the Mitre Hotel.

I was intrigued by the description given of this place. It was described as being central, having thirty-two rooms and listing such amenities as cable/satellite TV, coffee/tea maker and designer toiletries. The price they wanted for a single room for the night was £55, room only. I was impressed. This sounded like just the place I was looking for. However, before I confirmed my booking I thought I'd take a look at the overall travellers rating summary. It rated the following scores out of 5:

Overall Satisfaction 1

Hotel Service 1

Hotel condition 1

Room Cleanliness 1

Room Comfort 1

This score was as bad as any hotel could possibly get. However, only one person had actually bothered to rate the place, a person described by Expedia as "A traveller from Los Angeles" who "does not recommend this hotel". This was the understatement of the decade. The traveller from LA had qualified his ratings by stating that this hotel had "small, noisy rooms with rickety and hard beds, showers with mould between the grout, bad water pressure, worn down carpets, stained carpeting in the hallway and surly service". The traveller added his opinion that the hotel didn't deserve to be in business.

I laughed out loud after reading this. My mind swung to the image of the stereotypical Yank tourist, all pristine blue jeans, white sneakers and waterproof jacket, who moans when they find their bath has two separate taps instead of the one mixer. Surely the hotel wasn't that bad, surely. The gauntlet had been thrown down; I was out to prove this American visitor wrong. I immediately booked myself a room.

Come the day of the meet up. I arrived at Piccadilly station in Manchester and with the aid of a map made my way on foot to the hotel, which I found within ten minutes. When the Mitre described itself as being central they weren't kidding. I found it in a pedestrianised area plum next door to the cathedral within two minutes of the shopping centre, Victoria station and Deansgate, one of Manchester's main streets.
It's location could not have suited my needs better. As I had suspected the Mitre was also a pub, surprisingly small and filled with locals though giving off a good atmosphere. In addition, around the other side of the building was the Mitre Café Bar, which as it was midday was busy serving meals and drinks. I walked through the bar to the unmanned reception. I was quickly spotted by one of the busy bar staff who immediately treated me as her priority customer. She told me that my room would not be ready until after 2 o'clock, despite the internet info telling me that rooms were available from midday. She relented after I told her that I only wanted to drop off my rucksack prior to going out again and after giving me the key told me not to worry if the room hadn't been cleaned out.

The room itself was a single bedroom measuring approximately 12' x 8', with a small area which at one time must have been a built in wardrobe containing the toilet and a shower. First impressions were good. The room appeared somewhat shabby with cheap battered drawers and wardrobe but was light and very clean. The bed felt comfortable enough and seemed to suit my requirements quite adequately.

I didn't have time for further inspection as I was straight out of the door again for the meet up, but when I returned around 8 o'clock that evening I had more time to give the room a more thorough going over. I was not impressed. The room was certainly clean but the toilet/shower was a different story. As with the LA traveller there was mould in the grouting while the showerhead kept falling out of the wall bracket, forcing me to hold it while I showered. In addition, I found that the water pressure was indeed poor, perhaps not dribbling out but certainly not the refreshing jet that refreshes and cleans after a long hot day. The toilet was most curious. The seat itself was normal but the waste contraption below was a strange machine that gurgled and rumbled every time I flushed, and did not seem to be up to the job of clearing away one's human waste.

The bed, as I have said, was comfortable and the linen clean. The room itself was reasonably sized and well cleaned. The windows were not double-glazed and I could clearly hear the goings on outside of people carousing on a Saturday night. The heavy disappointment was the TV. On the internet the hotel had stated that each room had cable/satellite TV. Not in this room it didn't. What I got was a plastic portable TV that was at least twenty years old and had cigarette burn marks on it's top. Reception, if you could call it that, was gained by twiddling the circular aerial at the back.

None of this mattered too much due to the fact I was very tired after having worked a night shift the previous night so I was soon in bed and, I have to say, slept soundly through the night.

In the morning I woke around 8 o'clock and made myself a cup of tea from the "coffee/tea maker" which was actually a small kettle with a cup and sachets of milk, sugar, tea and coffee. My intention was to have a good lie in before catching the train home. However, this all changed after I visited the toilet where my worst fears about the waste system were confirmed when it failed to flush away my produce. Soon there was a nasty smell filling the whole room, forcing me to quickly dress, pack and get out the room as fast as I could.

I made my way down to reception with the intention of checking out and reporting the faulty toilet. A young lady who seemed to be very busy doing nothing manned it. However, she was disinterested, monosyllabic, and frankly rude. The only time she made eye contact was to briefly look at me incredulously when I asked her whether the £55 I had paid included breakfast, curtly telling me it was not. It was then I decided to say nothing about the toilet and left.
So, what was my overall opinion of the Mitre Hotel in Manchester?

Let's start with the positives. It's central location is extremely convenient and the bar downstairs seemed okay. The hard working bar ladies were friendly, helpful and mindful that their hotel guests took priority over their customers at the bar. The bedroom itself was adequately sized, clean and comfortable. One additional touch I liked was the fact that, unlike many hotels, they had supplied enough tea, coffee and milk for drinking in the evening as well as for that morning cuppa.

Now the negatives. I wouldn't have minded the room having an old TV if the hotel had not advertised on Expedia that every room had cable TV. The only cable my one had was the one with an electric power plug at the end of it. The shower was poor, broken and the grouting dirty with mould while the toilet flushing system was frankly not up to the job. My biggest gripe was with the lazy rude girl manning reception on the Sunday morning. The LA tourist, when describing the surly service, must surely have been referring to her.

I had expected a typical British hotel and I was not disappointed in that respect. It is typical in being situated in an old building (around 200 years old) and has been decorated and refurbished over the years on the cheap.
It was basically clean while the staff attitude ranged from friendly to awful. I ended up agreeing with a lot of the comments made by the LA traveller whose opinions I had originally so derided.

Regarding the so-called cable TV mentioned on Expedia, I have been in touch with trading standards who are investigating.

I paid far too much to stay at this hotel and would not recommend it to others, despite its location.

On reflection, when checking out I should have told the rude receptionist that my opinion of her hotel could be found in the blocked toilet of my room.

 

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