Travel

Manchester, United Kingdom

I stayed in room 108 at the Cumberland for 6 nights, while on an Alfa coach tour.

This hotel seems to be owned by the same company as Alfa, and, consequently, it was pretty.

I stayed in room 108 at the Cumberland for 6 nights, while on an Alfa coach tour.

This hotel seems to be owned by the same company as Alfa, and, consequently, it was pretty full with coach parties when I was there. On the whole this was not problem, but mealtimes felt like an exercise in crowd control, with rigid rules about when we were allowed to sit down for our meal, and some long waits to be served (although sometimes we were lucky and were served immediately).

The food for meat-eaters seemed pretty good, but I am vegetarian and, although there was a menu of vegetarian main courses, this was unimaginative and of fairly poor quality. It also appeared that the full menu was standard across all of the hotels owned by this company and so it was impossible to have any variation. Having said this, the prescribed desserts were varied and excellent.

The room, although a little small, was clean, and the en-suite shower worked extremely well. The only problem that we experienced was squeaky floorboards, which was odd, because, in all other respects, the building appeared to have been very well refurbished, with plain, clean, decor and furnishings. As a result of the floorboards, we could hear every bathroom trip during the night in the room upstairs as well as in our own room.

As others have said, the 4 person lift was inadequate, and would have been a real problem if we had been on a higher floor. But the staff were (with one notable exception) friendly, and it wasn't their fault that the Spa lift to and from the seafront closed for repair on the day that we arrived, leaving us with a steep walk back to the hotel from the town.

On balance, this was a pleasant stay, though I would be unlikely to book into any hotel owned by this company in the future, because of the poor vegetarian food.