Maldron Hotel Manchester City Centre — Hotel in Manchester

High hopes stained by an overly underwhelming experience.

The hotel itself is located in the centre of Manchester with easy accessibility to nearby points if interest. Parking is available a 2 minute walk down the road at an NCP car park for ~13,50GBP for 24 hours however others have mentioned that this can be booked via the hotel for a slightly cheaper price.

A shame that when booking (at least through my experience), one is not given the choice to select a room on a higher floor like with countless other hotels, but rather a seemingly arbitrary room is assigned to you. I would gladly welcome the addition of selecting a higher floor for a premium.

The overall design and aesthetic of the hotel is very pleasing however the rooms are a different story.

The rooms themselves are nicely laid out and the bathroom delineates perfectly a mix of comfort, style and modernity. The problems arise upon closer inspection of the room.

The bathroom, with its rainfall shower has a lot of potential, but sadly certain elements were overlooked. The water pressure from the shower was very weak, and felt in fact, like mildly heavy rain. I appreciate that this may be an exogenous factor out of the hotels control. The ceiling above the shower was peeling, presumably from the moisture, and small bits of the paint would end up in the shower. Finally, the extraction fan in the bathroom did not seem to turn on, resulting in all surfaces and objects in the bathroom being covered in condensation. We did ponder over the prospect of a link between the shower, or the AC but despite trying multiple things, were unable to get it working.

The AC, despite having a control panel in the room, seemed to be centrally controlled meaning you had very little to no control over the temperature of the room or it reverted back to a standard temperature after a while, luckily the preset temperature was not uncomfortable but for those that prefer temperatures outside the average this may be important to note.

Moving on to the other piece of modern technology that one would expect to work flawlessly, we arrive at the television. A cheap 1920x1080p television without native smart functionality is, in my opinion, antithetical to a 4 star hotel in 2022. Although it did have a Chromecast connected, casting to it with a smartphone was anything but straightforward.

After 1 hour of troubleshooting we were finally able to get a stream playing via Chromecast but after going out & coming back. My theory is that since most TVs supply ~0,5a via the USB port, which is less than the Chromecast requires, it simply cannot pull the power it needs and as soon as it starts to stream something it crashes. Simply and lazy oversights like this make the overall experience feel very cheap and botched together.

The room itself was not in good condition, nor was it clean. It seemed to have been cleaned with the mentality of "if it's not visible, it doesn't exist", and we found wrappers, a sock and cigarettes by the bottom of the beds. The walls were extremely dirty, with what looked like a shoe mark on one of them, and the headboard had stains on it. The cleanliness of the room was bar none the most egregious of affronts. Around the bottom of the beds looked like it had not been cleaned in a very long time, evidenced by the presence of an old TV remote.

Despite being booked for 3 people, there were only 2 glasses available, and it's small minute details like so that reduce the experience.

The following morning after being greeted by the fire alarm at 9,30am we checked out, a quick but impersonal procedure where the keycards are dropped in...

Overall, we had a very nice one night stay at Maldron for my fiancé's birthday on 18/08/2025-19/08/2025.

The hotel is modern and clean, with friendly and helpful staff. We got to Manchester 4 hours before check-in to make the most out of the day, and were able to drop off our suitcase in the luggage storage whilst we went exploring. It took us just under 15 minutes to walk straight down the road to the Manchester Museum and there are countless restaurants, cafés, and shops on the way. Ubers to restaurants and bars a little further out were incredibly fast (less than 3 min wait!), and there are clearly key bus and train routes very close by.

On our return, the check-in machines were fantastic and quick to use, which saved wait times at a busy reception.

The room itself was rather spacious and we had a nice city view. Despite the hustle and bustle outside, it was very well sound-proofed. All the usual amenities were provided, except a mini bar which would have been useful to chill the still water provided - room temp water is not at all appealing. The bathroom was of a good size and modern with a lovely shower.

We took advantage of the brilliant Happy Hour at the bar, which included £4 glasses of prosecco. It is a nicely furnished, comfortable seating area in the bar area, as is the restaurant.

In the morning, the cooked breakfast and food options were fantastic. A great birthday breakfast for my partner to fuel up before a busy day of surprises. I took a cinnamon roll and lemon drizzle cake away as a snack during the drive home - I wish I took a second slice of the cake for us to have one each!

Unfortunately, I had to take off one star for "Service" and one off my overall rating as I paid for the Celebration Package, which wasn't value for money. Firstly, the "birthday card" provided was simply a message on a piece of their branded card. This is very misleading, as I'm sure anyone would assume an actual birthday card would be provided. I wasn't impressed with this considering the £35 fee I paid. I also wasn't impressed by how cheap the banner was. I wanted to take it home to reuse, yet it ripped immediately as I tried to carefully remove it due to being very thin. On top of this, the balloons quickly deflated and many were near the ground by the time we left 18 hours later. They would have certainly all been on the floor if we stayed on his actual birthday night, which would have been very disappointing! However, the balloons did look nice on arrival and chocolates were lovely - albeit a very small box of 5 - and it was a great surprise for my partner to have this in the room on arrival. Regrettably, this specific add-on was not value for money, so I would not recommend purchasing this.

All-in-all, we would recommend Maldron to others visiting the area in terms of the value for money for just the room and breakfast (£50pp) as well as the location.

Note: The car park the hotel recommends is the Euro Car Park around the corner. After reading numerous recent reviews on Google page for it regarding a high volume of break-ins, lack of CCTV, and issues with fines, I opted to instead park in the secure Q-Park First Street, approx 8 min walk away. It was spotless with huge spaces and wide lanes to manoeuvre. I also found a discount code whilst booking online which meant it was only £15 for 24 hours, so not much different to the Euro. I definitely recommend parking here instead. I felt completely relaxed that my...

We booked a night away on Valentines Day as we had tickets at the Palace Theatre to watch Hamilton.

Location was amazing. A very short walk from both the theatre and Oxford Road Station. We decided to drive and the car park round the corner was also very convenient.

Communication from the hotel however regarding parking (and other arrangements which I’ll mention shortly) were quite poor. We tried to ring 3 times prior to our arrival to arrange parking with the hotel- all three times we were cut off from being on hold after 20 minutes. If you arrange parking through the hotel, it’s £15 for 24 hours. As we couldn’t get through we ended up just paying £17 for 24 hours for ease - although not much, it’s still extra that wasn’t necessary.

We booked a special Valentine’s package which included afternoon tea, a night stay, rose petals and a balloon in the room and breakfast the next day. Despite LOTS of confirmation emails before arrival, there was no mention about the arrangements for afternoon tea. When we arrived, we enquired what time it would be and was told that it was 24 hours notice and we would have to have it the next day (although they did compensate this with giving us free late checkout which was appreciated!). A little communication beforehand regarding the arrangements on the welcome emails would have been really useful.

When we got to the room, the rose petals, chocolates and the balloon were all lovely. The room was clean (although the bottom corner of the shower looked like it could have used some bleach as it was a little bit orange mouldy and the silicone had black mould on it - but nothing too disgusting that required us to complain / change rooms- just disappointing for a 4* hotel to see).

The staff were all very friendly and polite, especially the people on the desk in the mornings.

At night time, we got back from the theatre and felt peckish. The menu said room service ran 10am-10pm but pizzas were 24 hours. We ordered a pizza at 11pm. It was not worth the £13.50 (+£5 service charge) that we paid unfortunately. The base was chewey and quite brown and the cheese was just barely melted. It looked like a frozen pizza from Tesco whizzed in the oven for ease and taken out a few minutes early. It was really disappointing.

The next day, the breakfast spread was great, a great variety… just everything felt like it had been sat there for hours. We went down before 9am but the bacon and mushrooms were cold, the bread was a bit stale and the croissant I had was very tough. The granola on top of the yoghurt was soggy too.

Afternoon tea, again, felt a little underwhelming with the bread of the sandwiches feeling a little stale and the soup being lukewarm at best. The sausages were described as “pigs in blankets” but the absence of bacon wrapped round it left it just a pig without a blanket really. The passion fruit tart also seemed dried out round the edges like it was old.

Overall, the location was amazing The staff were friendly The room was mostly clean and had everything you needed in it

Just some little attentions to detail that made the stay just average when it could have been amazing

Would stay again for the location and general facilities but maybe not with...