Holiday Inn - the niu, Loom Manchester North, an IHG Hotel — Hotel in Manchester

The hotel itself is clean, modern and comfortable. The location is good - very close to the tramline and city. They have EV charging in the car park. However, no cameras in the parking area, and I've read reviews about vehicle break-ins. This made me opt-out of driving from Dublin via ferry and we got a flight instead.

With that being said, I don't care how good the quality or the location of a place is - if you don't have hospitable staff, it's a hard pass for me. I do not recommend it.

I'm giving 2 stars because of the poor attitude from one of their reception staff, she was the least bit accommodating. She must have been having a bad day after a 7 - 3pm shift or she just didn't like the look of me. Either way, keep your issues away for hospitality.

We arrived Wed 22nd Feb, checkout was 24th. I approached the desk smiling and cheerful, as I was in Manchester for my birthday for United v Barca - nothing could ruin my mood - but this staff's poor form certainly was a contender. I simply checked with her to see if our room would be available sometime during the day for an earlier than 3pm check-in. She immediately responded with "you have to pay £50, otherwise come back at 3pm". I even said "so 10 mins before 3pm, £50?" and she responded with "that's our policy"... Okay then grumpy - so we went to the lounge to sort our day out.

I came back to the same woman about 30 mins later to ask if we can have our included breakfast before check-in. She said "no, breakfast is £11" (approx.). I then mentioned that our checkout is around 3am on the day, we will miss breakfast on our last day, can we please have it now, as they don't do takeaway breakfast for early checkout.

At this point, I'm okay with these very inhospitable policies and if that's how this hotel is run, then fair enough. However, this woman's way of talking to me was very bad mannered.

So again, we sat at lounge and continued organising our day. As I sat there, I was thinking of getting a quick pick-me-up coffee from the machine at the breakfast area. However, I instantly opted for getting one in the city, because their rude staff didn't even have the decency to tell us to help ourselves to the "complimentary" tea and coffee... We were there thinking it's for breakfast only. I didn't want to have to deal with such a person again or give more money to a hotel with a rude staff.

We went about our day and came back approximately 2pm. I saw a new staff member, immediately avoided the rude one and went straight to the other... Thankfully, this woman was much more approachable and cheerful. I asked her the same question about check-in, she was nice and explained "your room isn't available yet, maybe in the next 30 minutes or so, please help yourself to a complimentary tea or coffee." To the rude blonde woman, take note, that's how hospitality is done.

Now the last part - guess who's involved again... The hotel offers a complimentary drink if you opt out of room cleaning. All you have to do is put the note the door. Which I 100% did, but I still got a letter under my room door saying we had it on do not disturb side... So I brought this up with reception and this rude woman tells me that it's my mistake, not the cleaners. Keep in mind, our was never cleaned, regardless. It's now a "my words versus hers" situation. So I simply said "okay, even I left it on do not disturb, my room wasn't cleaned the whole day, so why not just give me the voucher now?"... She then said "well because it was on do not disturb, our staff couldn't come into your room to leave the voucher"... This made no sense whatsoever - their staff told me it would be placed under door and it's on their website. Regardless, my room was never cleaned. That's the whole point of the voucher. You'd swear this was a flight that I missed and can't get back. I've had much better accommodation from Ryanair than...

I’ll start this review off by mentioning that my partner and I had previously stayed at this hotel in March 2024 for one night and had no problem with it. However, this time around (December 2024) was the polar opposite.

Unfortunately on the night before our booking, my partner and I had both fallen ill with COVID, and decided that we would call reception in the morning to ask if we could amend our booking for another date as we were both ill and would have to travel all the way from Southampton, potentially putting others health at risk before Christmas. I understand that the booking was non refundable and therefore we did not ask for any money back, simply just to change the booking for a different date as that would be the common sense approach. We were told the booking was “non-changeable” and would have to attend if we didn’t want to lose out on the money. Just ridiculous.

So, we travelled 5+ hours feeling extremely unwell simply because nobody at the hotel had the common sense just to rearrange our booking for another date. I know I would be furious if I was another customer and saw that the hotel had encouraged two unwell customers to visit the hotel just before Christmas simply because they wouldn’t change the date.

Now to the hotel, we previously had a room on the south side (car park side) in March which we had no problems with, however this time our room was situated on the north side of the hotel with the window facing out towards the main road. If you get given a room here over the weekend, forget about trying to sleep. Every night it was like Greater Manchester Police’s racetrack, with sirens on full blast at 01:30am constantly waking you up every time you just about manage to drop off. It was non-stop. Friday. Saturday. Sunday.

The walls in the hotel may as well have been made out of papier mache as you can hear a pin drop in the rooms above/below and to the side of you, and the room (203) was so small you could barely swing a cat in it.

The room was very cold, even when we attempted to put the heater on, and the shower knob was stiff to operate. An older person would’ve struggled to tackle it. The toilet is placed against a side wall and therefore to sit on it you have to angle yourself sideways. A word of advice, if you want to use the toilet roll provided, it would probably be smoother to use a sandpaper from the local B&Q.

To summarise our experience, after night 1 our “Do not disturb” sign was strangely taken from outside of our door and upon informing reception of this, all we got told was “Hmm, that’s weird” and a new one was never given. Most staff were just totally useless and unhelpful, the only staff member that holds any credit is the young girl who checked us in with glasses and braids. She was very understanding and attempted to assist us as much as possible.

Sadly we won’t ever return now to what we used to think was a...

Let's address the issues people seem to have had with this hotel right now, shall we? ||No, there are not tea and coffee making facilities in the rooms. They aren't promised in the description of the hotel, but the very nice facilities in the lobby are great. They have machines that make just about any kind of hot beverage you could want, along with flavorings, paper cups with lids, and stoneware tea and coffee cups. ||We considered this a fair trade-off and enjoyed experimenting with different types of coffee drinks. And the hotel is only four or five stories tall, so it's not like you have to take the elevator for miles to get a hot drink. ||Yes, there are two single duvets on the beds. Again, my husband I and both liked this feature. Neither of us could accuse the other of stealing the blankets, and we were plenty warm. ||The rooms are not spacious by any stretch of the imagination, but they were clean, and if things were a bit tight, well, we were quite aware we could have paid more/used more points for another property if we thought it was worth the cost for the extra space. ||We didn't.||Also, I liked the textile-themed wall decoration in our room. ||The shower was nice, with good pressure and hot water. And it was here I have my only real complaint. Every now and then, there would be a slight break in the pressure and then the water would suddenly get much hotter for a moment. Not a deal-breaker, but I'd want to be aware of the issue if I was traveling with children. ||The staff members were friendly and courteous. ||The neighborhood didn't seem to be the most salubrious, but we felt safe enough, though we didn't walk far at night, only from the station, which is about a five minute walk. The stop is also just one away from Victoria Station, so the hotel is very convenient for exploring the city. ||I will say it's quite lengthy ride to the airport from this station, but that's because the airport isn't in the city, which means it's likely a long ride from anywhere. ||There was a large shopping center within a five minute walk also, with a grocery store, other stores, and a few restaurants -- mostly chain ones. I think there was a Pizza Hut, a fish and chip shop, a Greggs, and maybe a few others. There was also a Japanese restaurant you could walk to. ||There is an Irish Cultural Centre next-door that supposedly had a cafe and bar, but it wasn't open the whole time we were there, which was disappointing, though clearly nothing to do with the hotel. ||Also, the hotel has a restaurant. We chose not to eat there, mainly because we generally don't dine at hotel restaurants, but when we walked through to get coffee, the food smelled good. ||Would we stay there again? I think it's likely we will the next time we are...