I should add some context here.

There are several 3 and 4 star options at the actual airport.

This hotel is located across a busy roundabout from the airport, in the exclusive dormitory suburb of Hale Barns, which is an extremely affluent town. It was built as the Four Seasons hotel, not specifically as an airport hotel but as a well-located hotel with a couple of exclusive restaurants. It’s one of the places where twenty and thirty somethings socialise at.

(Hale Barns is a legacy of Manchester’s past as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. It, and Wilmslow and Prestbury on the other side of the airport, are amongst the wealthiest places in the UK, very similar to some parts of Surrey outside London.)

Very quickly the owners of the Four Seasons realised that they had a better market opportunity than they thought. As a five star destination hotel it was really only full on weekends, and had to deeply discount its rates during the week. But for professional people living an hour away in Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and other large towns and cities nearby, they needed to pay for expensive airport parking before flying out of Manchester Airport to long-haul destinations not served from their local airport.

The hotel then repositioned itself as a “slightly better than four star” pre-holiday hotel for those people, with free parking for them during their holiday. They get a nice room and the choice of either using the elegant restaurants and bar, or going out to the exclusive bars and restaurants in nearby Hale Village, where Manchester City and United’s players socialise.

(The drawback is that many of the parking spaces closest to the entrance to the hotel are blocked by cars whose driver is out of the country for two weeks.)

For not much more than the cost of a week
of airport parking these guests from nearby cities get to start their holiday one night early in the most desirable part of Manchester. (By which I mean Hale Barns, not the airport).

In effect, transforming the five star Four Seasons into the Marriott (now Delta) reduced the advertised rates from 5 star to 4 star levels, but ensured permanent full occupancy.

But it’s targeting doctors and lawyers and businessmen from Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield who are flying to Barbados or Asia tomorrow. (Plus Emirates pilots and cabin crew). They get a nice night before their big trip, and whatever their age if they get star struck there are five decades’ worth of City and United footballers plus Coronation Street (UK soap opera) stars out at play where they are like to have dinner or go to a bar. (For American readers, that’s like going out to dinner from your hotel and seeing Robert De Niro at one table with Martin Scorsese while Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are at the table next to yours, and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon at another.)

So this hotel is absolutely not targeting Bonvoy elites from the USA, and Bonvoy privileges are limited to the drab fare in offer in the executive lounge. Bonvoy elites barely contribute to this hotel’s profits, and they seem to be low priority for the management.