The Travel Critic

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

There are two Malmaisons in Manchester and I can only pray this one is being quietly lined up for closure, because what I found here was a ghost of the hotel it once thought it was. Once, I imagine, it strutted about in funky wallpaper, lurid cushions, and furniture that felt thrillingly modern. Now? Now it’s like discovering a vintage Jaguar, shiny in the showroom brochure, only to find rust in every panel and a suspicious puddle beneath the chassis.

On the surface, the Malmaison DNA remains. The lighting is low, the corridors moody, the odd splash of colour thrown about like confetti. But peel back the veneer — as I did in Room 316 — and the whole illusion comes apart like cheap laminate.

I made the fatal error of moving the bedside table in search of a plug socket. Behind it: more dust than a BBC props department would dare use to “age” a forgotten library book. And on the table itself, a spa menu, stained and thumbed to a degree that suggested it had passed through more hands than a twenty-pound note in a Wetherspoons. The thought of the actual spa fills me with a queasy dread.

The bathroom door handle wasn’t falling off so much as missing parts entirely, as if some previous guest had been at it with a screwdriver in frustration. The wardrobe walls were chipped, scuffed, stained — the sad remnants of style. And then there was the bath mat. Beige. That terrible hotel beige, neither deliberate nor accidental, just the beige of defeat. A colour so devoid of hope it might as well have come with a suicide note.

And the shame of it is that I wanted this place to work. I like Malmaison. They’re supposed to be fun. A bit louche, a bit sexy. A splash of lipstick on the grimy urban face of whichever city they pop up in. But this one is less lipstick and more smudged eyeliner after a long cry in the toilets.

A supermodel, yes. But one who, in her eighties, has been left too long in the sun, with nicotine stains on her fingers, creaking knees, and a penchant for mumbling about the old days.

The thing about old hotels is they either grow old gracefully, with charm and polish, or they cling to youth like a tragic nightclubber still in skinny jeans. Malmaison Manchester, I’m afraid, is the latter.

So, Malmaison, do the right thing. Close it, fix it, bury it — I don’t care. But don’t leave it standing like this. Because right now, it’s not a hotel. It’s a wake with room service.