Palace Hotel, Manchester > Reviews > The Palace: Fit for a Princess?

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	Central location, nice breakfasts
Disadvantages:	Expensive rack rate

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I live in Manchester. Not in a “Greater Manchester” kinda way, but in Manchester proper. You may wonder, therefore, why I stayed at the Palace Hotel in the city. I wondered too. But, I was at a national event organised by a national office, and in their national wisdom, they booked all of us in as resident conference delegates, even those of us who live within, um, walking distance. I do like my own place, my own kitchen, my own bed, but not in an obsessive way, so when someone else wants to pay for me to stay in a nice room where I don’t have to make the bed or clean the bath, and where I get 3 meals per day provided gratis, I don’t say no.

The Palace Hotel is located on Oxford Rd near the city centre. It’s near the Palace Theatre, the Cornerhouse cinema and the Sainsbury’s Local store. You can walk to Oxford Rd, Deansgate and Piccadilly stations quite easily, and the Arndale and Market Street shops are only 10 minutes walk away if you know where you’re going (or ask a helpful local…ask me and you might end up in Rusholme as a ‘joke’). China Town is up the road, and there’s a good selection of other restaurants near by too. There is a 24 hr chemists a minute up the road for those 24 hour chemical emergencies, and there’s a newsagents next door to that which does a roaring trade in hard to find imported chocolate bars. All being said, the location is not bad.

The Palace is quite an institution in Manchester, and if you walk past it early in the evening you often see tux-clad men and tarted up women tottering inside. It hosts a lot of balls, corporate functions and weddings but I wouldn’t really say it’s the type of place you go to stay otherwise. For one thing, it’s not cheap – rooms dip to about £75 if you manage to snag a good deal, but book near the time you want to stay, and insist on a certain date and you could pay £180 per room or more per night. For another, Manchester is not really the kinda place you come on a luxury holiday.

We were arriving on mass – over 100 of us – and had been given strict instructions to label bags clearly and leave them with the concierge. This we did, and after the day’s activities we returned to reception to check in (swift and easy for anyone who has pre-registered). My only slight concern was that they wanted a deposit for any charges to your room, and though that used to mean a credit card imprint (unsigned) it now seems to mean they put £50 on your card and make you enter your PIN too. Maybe they have special ‘holding money’ machines for hotels, but I’d never seen one before.

I went upstairs to find my room (quite a feat given the bizarre way in which they were numbered) and found my suitcase waiting for me in my sauna, sorry, room. Seriously, it was boiling hot in the way dusty old English hotels can be, but it wasn’t what I’d expected of the Palace. I couldn’t find a thermostat dial or air con switch, so I crawled on the floor and turned off the one radiator out of 3 that was switched on. 6 hours later when I went to bed the room was still toasty, and I never did find out how to open the windows.

Oppressive heat conditions aside, though, the room was n-I-c-e. I had the comfiest bed ever which I kept just for sleeping since I also had a bench, an arm chair and a chaise lounge thing for sitting on (the latter was leather and may or may not have been designed for bondage since it appeared to have little leather wrist straps…I left it be rather than find out). I had a desk and a freestanding wardrobe, and a TV with a good selection of channels in theory, but some crummy reception in practice. It also had radio but only local commercial stuff and Radio 2 (i.e. nothing decent). The bathroom was spacious and had a full length mirror next to the full length bath/shower. The freebies both here and in the desk drawers were adequate – shower gel, shampoo, shoe shine, a few sheets of writing paper – but nothing really worth stealing. There were telephones both in the bathroom and the bedroom but I don’t know anyone who would, in the advent of mobile phones, choose to use one for their external call. The charges were clearly advertised but still shocking – up to £65 for a 10 minute call.

The room had clearly been renovated recently and had a modern feel to it, with nice, contemporary art work on the walls, and a dubious faux-fur throw on the bed. The windows were floor-to-ceiling but only over looked an internal court yard. I had one double bed but all the rooms seemed to be different both in their styles and their bedding configuration (some had 2 double beds, some had 1 king size). They were different shapes and sizes too, and some were considerably nicer in their décor than others. We had tea and coffee making facilities but no mini bar, though given the prices in the bar-bar this was probably a good thing. Room service was available and the concierge were generally helpful, bringing up ice and glasses for champagne when asked.

We ate 3 meals in the hotel, starting with lunch which was a buffet in the Tempest restaurant and was perfectly acceptable – everything from curry to salmon, with a good choice of salads, and an outstanding array of puddings (at least 8 varieties of which I only managed to sample 3). We were conference guests so had started the day with pastries – again, a selection of 4 or 5 kinds, not just one. We also got afternoon tea and homemade-style biscuits, and then, after our champagne reception, we had dinner in a special room just for our group (though residents could eat in the Tempest restaurant at this point). We had a set menu which was quite normal food, nothing too pretentious, and the bit I had which was, um, the bread rolls and the pudding, were both nice, as were the petit fours. The following morning breakfast was magnificent. There were hot and cold buffets with the usual items just a wider variety – a dozen different cereals, for example, and 5 or 6 jams for your toast, plus various different kinds of pastries including both pain au chocolat *and* chocolate croissants. But the crème de la crème was definitely the cooked-to-order menu which included something rarely found on UK hotel menus, waffles and syrup. Naturally I ordered and they were scrumptious and reminiscent of those I had in Brussels last Christmas.

Though I spent little time in it, the hotel has a airy bar next to the restaurant, though drinks were more pricey than we are perhaps accustomed to in the grim north – no one seemed to get change from a tenner when they went up to get a couple, and we discovered downstairs that a bottle of house wine was nearer £20 than £15.

The hotel has no other facilities – no gym or pool, no library or garden, no gift shop. It is located close to all of those things, it just doesn’t have them inside. However, as I alluded to earlier, this is not really a hotel many people would holiday in, for its location as much as anything else, and if you were staying with a group for a conference or ball, you wouldn’t have time to use such facilities any way.

Did I enjoy my stay? Absolutely. Would I pay £180 to stay here again? No. (That’s not just a reflection on this place…I wouldn’t choose to spend that much to stay anywhere.) But it’s old world glamour that you can’t possibly compare to the Travelodges and Premier Travel Inns of this world, and for one night this Palace can make you feel like a Princess.

http://www.palace-hotel-manchester.co.uk/