Staybridge Suites Liverpool

What is your Priority Club status?
Diamond

Were you (or for multi-stayers are you generally) happy with the hotel/stay?
Yes

Which room did you book and which upgrade did you receive?
Studio King > Studio King
(there’s only one other room category: one bed suite)

How are the rooms?
Basically like an older-style UK Holiday Inn Express room and bathroom, with an added kitchenette (which I didn’t need and didn’t use).
A high kitchen table instead of a desk.
The window could be opened, but this made the room cold.

How is the exec. lounge?
None

What was good and what was bad?
Good
- More spacious than an HIX, by design
- “Wheel of fortune” at check in with prizes for all – I got a mini bottle of wine which the hotel sells for £6, my colleague enjoyed this later on. Other prizes were snacks or IHG points.
(There was an evening social on the night I stayed but I had other plans, it sounded relatively popular.)

Bad

• connecting to Wifi is a big faff, each room has an individual router/SSID, you have to turn on the TV and navigate to a password generator. So it only remains connected near your room, you can’t connect in the corridors/lifts, and there is another open network for use in the breakfast area and lobby.
• at check in I asked to charge the room rate to the card in my profile, the agent did something on the computer and also manually typed my card number into the POS machine. My card was charged twice and both transactions fully posted. Before I could be bothered to contact the hotel, a negative charge of the same amount also posted to my card (and happily, the rewards on the duplicate transaction were not clawed back)
• breakfast was the usual poor quality UK HIX style breakfast. Hot drinks machine wasn’t working. They did have a few fresh vegetables
• main light bulb in the room was very dim and close to blowing, housekeeping should have noticed this. It looked cumbersome to replace and because I had already moved some heavy equipment into the room for processing, I decided just to move the table and lamps.
• the location is slightly out of the city centre, so there should be more space for car parking, especially when they charge £20 per night, but I was told it was full. I wasn’t going to pay anyway as there is free street parking 500m away, near the McDonalds, until 10am. Signs said 15 minutes free for drop-off/pick-up on the private road by the entrance – I saw no cameras to enforce this and several vehicles remained there overnight.

Value for $ or Priority Club Points? Would you return?
I paid £97 including 3000 bonus points. Even without the points, at time of booking it was by far the cheapest IHG in Liverpool, and I would return on this basis.