We stayed at The Midland Hotel in the Midland suite during our latest trip to Manchester for the Christmas markets. Here’s our room review!
The Midland Hotel is steeped in history with 312 elegant hotel rooms.
Recently the hotel underwent a £14M refurbishment and I went to check out the ultimate suite in the hotel for the evening.
The Midland Suite
With a stunning view of the Manchester library and St.Peters Square our hotel room was staggeringly large.
Bigger than the Deluxe Suite at the Big Blue Hotel and with ceilings high enough to bungee from!
The decor of the room was very minimalistic with some nice flowers here and there along with a vase or two and an ornament here and there.
Being a room of such a vast size everything looked tiny within it anyways.
Spread across a bedroom, bathroom and living / dining room I was expecting much bigger TV’s, they looked lost!
Both TV’s in both rooms looked absolutely tiny and sitting atop that huge bed the TV at the end of the room looked about the size of an iPad!
Thankfully, we had much to do in Manchester that evening that watching television wasn’t on our list of priorities.
The Midland Hotel is conveniently located in the heart of Manchester and is a stones throw away from Piccadilly, the Arndale Centre and all the shops, restaurants and more that your heart desires.
Location is of the upmost priority when I book hotels and The Midland certainly ticks all the boxes.
This hotel is one I’ve stayed in numerous times now and when I stayed before the refurbishment the rooms were certainly in need of a modernisation.
Personally, I wouldn’t have updated the rooms with such cool tones in contrast to the warm tones that the hotel had previous. It feels very simple and safe and that’s usually not my taste.
Whilst the size of the room eclipsed that of the Blackpool Big Blue Hotel the charm that the Big Blue had with its warm tones wiped the floor with the cold in comparison Midland Suite.
If it wasn’t for the accents in the walls of the Midland Suite it would be a very bland hotel room indeed.
Relying on its sheer size (big enough to play a good game of tag in it) and history this room was certainly elegant indeed but I felt it just needed that something extra.
The most expensive room in the hotel also didn’t come with a bathtub but instead had a beautiful waterfall walk-in shower. For those who know me quite well, I take a bath in every hotel room I stay in. Not having a bath is a dealbreaker for me when it comes to returning to certain hotels / rooms.
During our stay the hotel was experiencing issues with the heating within the building.
Not ideal considering we are right in the middle of winter but our suite had a heater all set up in the room that provided a very toasty reception for us when we entered.
The one thing that niggled me was that absolutely no staff member told us about the heating issues or offered a discount or anything of the sort.
Upon my return I saw many unfavourable reviews of this ongoing issue (since early December) with cold rooms and rude staff members being a topic of discussion.
During our experience I checked in online before attending so staff contact was minimal other than collecting my room key and check-out was done online which meant simply dropping my keys off on the way out.
Would I stay here again?
Absolutely!
Would I stay in the Midland Suite again?
Probably not.
Whilst the room is beautiful, elegant and wonderful in every way it just lacked that home comfort that hotel rooms are meant to provide.
I felt as though the furnishings weren’t of high quality, the pillows on the bed were as hard as rocks and everything felt rather half-assed in the refurbishment design.
I imagine most of the budget went on the reception with the rooms being an afterthought.
For the most expensive room in the hotel, a hotel of such regal quality and history, I was just expecting more.
Check out our room tour below:
