View from the Room - Malmaison, Liverpool
Five-star location, Two-star experience
This travel post will start like every other one you’ve probably read this year, with a number.
Eight.
It’s been eight months since I’ve last stayed in a hotel. For someone who goes away once or twice a year, this is unbreakable. For us, with an average of 5-6 trips annually, it’s a house arrest. Travel fuels me. As it says on the home page, it’s the only thing I buy that makes me richer.
Seeing as this was going to be the first hotel stay since Canterbury for my birthday last October (which was just OK) we decided to take no chances and book with a mainstream luxury brand.
Location
First impression walking into the hotel was as I expected. The location is great, away from noise - what travel magazines call the hustle and bustle - with a wonderful view of the Mersey. Quite magical.
Malmaison Liverpool did not, however, live up to its claim of staying in stylish rooms. Unless by stylish means sweaty, stifling and uncared for
Service
When we walked into our stifling room on the third floor, we realised either the hotel hadn’t put the air con on during a day where we were hitting the mid-20s, or, it wasn’t working correctly.
Sadly it took 24 hours for them to deduce it was the latter. No amount of fiddling with controls - there are no instructions, digital or old fashioned paper stuck to the wall - or going back and forth to the reception helped. They were adamant it worked but finally gave us instructions. It wasn’t just a case of changing the temperature as the lowest we could get was 16c, but the room felt like 26. They told us to expect it to kick in after 30 minutes and went out for the evening. It didn’t work. This time, they offered us a change of room or a fan. It was bedtime, so we took the fan, which helped but, we still had a sleepless night due to the noise on top of the heat.
The next day, we-restarted operation get-our-room-cooler. Eventually, a helpful duty manager came to the room and still insisted he could hear the aircon working but showed us next door where it was slightly cooler. We decided to move later that evening so as to not use up any more of the day.
Whereas the reception staff tried to help at every turn, the bar knocked a further two stars off. It was the opening night of the Euros and as ever, I’m keen to watch every match I’m able to. For sure, Italy is at the top of my must-see teams and as they had a convenient 8pm match that we fancied watching in a relatively empty lounge rather than our stuffy room. Not a big drinker, we have a cocktail tradition while we are away and after the shenanigans of the day, this seemed an excellent time to partake.
We moved rooms just before kickoff watched a bit of the match and at half-time, we went down to the bar to be seated as the signage instructed us.
Then we waited, and waited for someone to take our order.
For a relatively quiet place, we’d passed my cut-off point of 15 minutes to wait allowing for less staff on duty. I’d just about put up with 20 minutes if it came with a big apology. But no. I thought hospitality would be as desperate to reopen and start earning revenue again as much I was keen to eat out again. After 25 minutes, I realised that isn’t the case for the Mal in Liverpool. The game was nearly over by this time, in more ways than one.
Having decided against ordering, we took back the actual paper voucher we’d pre-purchased for a cocktail and breakfast deal. At this stage, reception staff offered complimentary breakfast anyway - I guess the duty manager had heard the news, but we had been left with a sour taste.
The night before, they had closed the kitchen at 9.30 and I wanted a bar snack at 9.45. Not even a bowl of wedges was possible. After a bit of pleading, they said we could order from our room but, we decided against waiting who knows how long for a soggy toastie for the price of a meal out. I guess we shouldnt have expected any better.
Comfort
Aside from the stifling stuffiness, both rooms we had were great. Remarkably the one where we changed to was considered an upgrade and yet had a smaller bed. We did have bathrobes, which sadly came in individual plastic bags (I guess for current increased hygiene standards) but only one of them had slippers. I didn’t ask for any more, we didn’t need them anyway. The upgraded room had complimentary plastic bottles of water and an espresso machine so at least on the second morning, we could have decent-ish coffee. It had a larger window so had the feel of more space and freshness even if the air con still wasn’t fully kicking in.
As a final kick, when we moved rooms, I left my Packmate luggage bags behind. I’d tucked them in the wardrobe thinking I won’t forget as we need them to pack. That lost another 20 minutes while we waited in a warm room for someone to come up and open the old room instead of getting out for breakfast. We packed up best we could (the Packmate bags take all the air out so the clothes take up less room in the case) and headed down to check out and get out. Luckily, when we went back to collect our luggage before we headed home reception staff had located the bags and returned them.
Storage
Bizarrely there was no fold-up luggage rack in the new room so I couldn’t do a like-for-like transfer of our stuff. There was less shelving but more desk space instead.
For clothes, there’s only one drawer that we had to share, otherwise, the wardrobe with two shelves and 10 hangers (1 broken, 2 padded) was ample for a couple of nights.
Another wardrobe holds a much appreciate empty fridge, safe (couldn’t work it) and further shelving.
Bathroom
There are more strange shenanigans in the bathrooms. The world has moved to full-sized refillable toiletry bottles attached to the wall. The first room had three bottles of shampoo and one shower gel. But no actual shower gel near the bath which, bizarrely had a shampoo even though there was no handheld shower to wash hair with. Otherwise:
Lovely bathtub
Separate rainbow shower opposite the toilet (lovely but I need a handheld to get to the parts this doesn’t reach. I call it a sexist shower)
Decent towels - 2 bath, 2 hand, and a bathmat
Storage around the basin and ample shelving underneath
Well-lit mirror
Heated, controllable rail. (although hardly needed as the room was warm enough to dry towels)
Two glasses
Tissue box
Cotton wool
Lighting & Power
Although we had the usual challenge of hotel rooms in figuring out which ones did what, this is part of the fun. There was plentiful light in all the right places. The desk light is handy and although the hallway was a little dark, this seems standard in hotels. A generous allocation of ten power sockets and eight USB points were handy.
The service seemed to be cut in two with reception staff trying their best but failing and the bar staff, not trying
Overall, it just seemed like they had re-opened and just thrown everything into place the best they could and then forgot to make checks. Perhaps they are not doing checks to limit the number of people going into the room. A classic case of style over substance. Despite some of the reception, members of staff reasonable effort, I expect so much more from the Malmaison.
