Hotels : Part 2

A while ago I booked a weekend at the Hilton Manchester Deansgate Hotel, and in an earlier missive explained how difficult the booking process was, and naturally how little confidence I had that the weekend would be a success after those experiences. Well, the weekend was last weekend, and I'm pleased to say that it passed without major mishap and was a great weekend all told.

Well, kind of.

The hotel itself, situated at the south end of Deansgate is certainly impressive, or rather the building in which it is housed – the 47-storey, 171m Beetham Tower – is impressive. As we drove into Manchester on the M60, we saw a huge structure rising majestically on the horizon with a curious jutting addition on one side, rather evoking memories of a certain upended Tetris tile. At first I assumed it wasn't as tall as it looked and that as we approached it would appear far smaller. Not used to seeing skyscapers like the Beetham Tower in isolation – it's far and away the tallest structure in Manchester after the CIS Building on Balloon Street, and stands out more so due to the comparatively low concentration of tall buildings in Manchester compared to, say, Canary Wharf. It's sleek, modern and both one of the tallest mixed-use buildings in the UK (the upper twenty-odd stories are residential) and one of the tallest buildings outside London. It's also one of the thinnest skyscrapers in the world (from the side), measured by the proportion of height to width. And so, generally being the kind of person to get excited about tall buildings, when we got a little closer and saw the Hilton logo emblazoned half-way up, I was quite excited.

Problem number one came in the shape of the parking at the hotel – there isn't any, but there is an NCP next door. Except that unless you arrive with the workers at the start of the day (coincidentally when the check-in staff would laugh at you and tell you to come back later), you've a cat in a hot place's chance of getting a space. We found ourselves in another car park adjacent to this one in a converted railway shed, then realised just how far away from the hotel we actually were, quickly worked out how many trips we would have to make from car to hotel room along a not inconsiderable stretch of Deansgate just to move into our room, and emitted a loud groan. The receptionist, when we finally got to the desk, suggested that concierge might be happy to help us with our bags from the car, except that the thought of trying to make idle chit-chat with a stranger, plus the requisite tip he would no doubt expect, really didn't appeal. I enquired why it was that the hotel didn't have a drop-off point, at which the receptionist gestured at the building workers toiling away in the warm Manchester sun outside, on what would become the drop-off point. Not helpful. I reckon the parking / luggage lugging cost me about an hour of my stay. What perhaps irked me more than the absence of a convenient drop-off area was the insouciant ignorance of the receptionist, who, when I asked whether there was a quick way from the car park to the hotel shrugged his shoulders and said 'I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the parking around here – I don't drive.' Not what you'd expect.

Aside from room that afforded views out of the city rather than over it, the room was fine, but not what one could describe as outstanding. There was a distinct feeling of style over substance, as if Hilton had attempted to load a heap of contemporary features you'd expect to see in smaller, more modish hotels, into the Deansgate Hotel. To the uninitiated, the inclusion of Villeroy & Boch white ware or an LCD TV could be seen as the height of hotel eloquence, but when placed in one of the pokiest bathrooms I've ever seen it just smacked of trying to be clever. For practical illustration, it was impossible to get to the toilet without fully opening the door, walking into the room, then closing the door behind you, as the toilet was situated behind the door; the door would then swing shut of its own accord, neatly boxing you in – tidy, I grant you, but also rather claustrophobic if so afflicted.

A point, not of the hotel’s doing but worth pausing over nonetheless, would be the comedic and frustrating art of trying to participate in any sort of evening activity – watching the television, eating a meal, listening to music – without waking a child who goes to sleep at 7.00 and who is in their cot in the corner of the room. Well, that point became a rather unfunny joke as our young daughter took an absolute age to settle into a deep slumber, requiring us to stay resolutely out of view and immobile so as not to catch the attention of a creature suddenly more inclined to wanting to play at all hours of the night rather than be her usual soporific self. We resorted to eating dinner in the room, in the dark no less, with me slumped halfway down in a large chair with its back to her travel cot so as to become as close to invisible as possible with Seren trying to find any conceivable way of getting our attention; this may sound funny, but it put paid to any audible conversation I can tell you, and thus we had two very early trips to bed faced with the impracticalities of trying to do anything else. For the (topical) record, at no point would we have considered leaving Seren in her cot while we escaped to the bar or restaurant. Never have, never would.

I have long been of the opinion that the quality of a hotel may be judged solely on one factor – not the attentiveness of the staff, not the amenities or proximity to a city centre, but the quality of room service meals. We enjoyed two beautifully-presented meals on our second night that tasted as good as they looked in their bone-white square bowls on night-black trays. However, my specific room-service measure is a simple one, but one which hotels I've stayed in consistently fail on – the warmth of toast served with a room service breakfast. Whether it was because of the height of the building and therefore the vast distance from kitchen to room, but the toast was stone cold by the time it reached our table; similarly, the butter was practically frozen, leaving you trying to forcibly spread this onto toast which is breaking up and turning to crumbs as your knife presses down aggressively upon it. So zero points for that I'm afraid.

And then there was check-out. Having moved the car closer to the hotel I was not at all concerned about the distance from room to car which plagued our first day, but we decided to extend our stay and requested a late checkout, which we were duly granted without charge. Pleased that we could enjoy the city for a little longer in the knowledge that we'd be able to get back into the room, freshen up, change Seren's nappy and not have to leave bags either unsafely in our car or with concierge, we wandered around a very quiet Manchester, making a beeline for various sites of significance to Factory Records and took ourselves to a Pizza Express next to the old Free Trade Hall (mental note – do not take a child to a cavernous, echo-y building if other diners are to enjoy a peaceful prandium).

When we tried to get back into our room, we discovered that our keys had been cancelled. A maid quite innocently let us back into the room, prompting us to wonder whether she'd have done that irrespective of whether it was actually our room or not. When we came to check out properly, the receptionist advised us that we'd in fact settled and checked out already. 'Bonus!' I thought to myself. 'We've got ourselves a free stay.' And then they swiped my card again, leaving me with a somewhat queasy feeling that I'd take a look at my next credit card statement and discover that I'd have been charged twice.

Our weekend in Manchester provided a number of learning points for us about trying to combine parts of our old, largely responsibility-free former lives, with parental duties. More importantly than that, however, it has reminded of just how wrong large hotels can be in so many disparate areas. Manchester Deansgate was a classic mistake of judging a book by its cover – great from the outside, but lacking in some basic areas when you open the cover.