Manchester, United Kingdom

Velvet Hotel

Price per night from$112.05

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP93.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Velvet Hotel Photos

Style

Dark and stormy

Setting

Camp canalside

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There’s nothing sheepish about Velvet Hotel, an unblushingly brooding base in the heart of Manchester’s Canal Street where vampy interiors set the stage for all-day dining and sultry, low-lit sleepovers. A long-term favourite of the gay village’s prosecco-popping precinct, it’s earned its (rather luxe) stripes thanks to its individually designed rooms, bistro-style fare and bacchanal after-hours come the weekend. And while the bones of this ex-cotton warehouse are characteristically industrial, the only laborious task you’ll be engaging in is pruning out your poison from the four-page cocktail menu or working up an appetite under the restaurant’s light-splintering disco balls.

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Signature cocktail on arrival

Facilities

Photos Velvet Hotel facilities

Need to know

Rooms

35, including ten suites.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability and an additional charge. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £111.60, including tax at 20 per cent.

More details

Rates don’t include breakfast, but a hearty hamper of morning munchies can be delivered to your door for £6 per person.

At the hotel

Bar, restaurant, free WiFi. In rooms: bathrobes, Taylors of Harrogate tea, Illy coffee machine, mini bar, Molton Brown bath amenities, 65-inch TV.

Our favourite rooms

With exposed brick set off against walls of royal blue, the fourth-floor Signature Penthouse Suite is something to write home about. Perfect for entertaining, these duplex rooms feature a private bar, complete with high-top seating, on the first level, and an en suite bed deck on the second. Lovebirds will swoon at the sight of the Signature Velvet Suite – a sexy, sage green sanctuary with ambient mood lighting, black-out blinds and an in-room bath tub.

Packing tips

Be sure to pack your dancing shoes, Manchester’s gay village is a fine spot for a late-night shimmy.

Also

The hotel has several rooms with adapted bathrooms, as well as step-free access and lifts.

Children

Book the babysitter; this slinky hotel is a grown-up number.

Sustainability efforts

The hotel encourages greener living through small but noble gestures such as refillable amenities, limiting printed materials and a range of energy saving systems across lighting, cooling and heating.

Food and Drink

Photos Velvet Hotel food and drink

Top Table

On sunnier days, take your tipple on the canal side terrace. In the winter, cosy up on one of the black leather banquette seats indoors.

Dress Code

Velvet, of course – ciselé, crushed or midnight black.

Hotel restaurant

You’ll find a fusion of traditional English and Mediterranean dishes at the well-loved Village Brasserie, with a focus on locally sourced, seasonal ingredients. Start with the Burrata Caprese salad with rocket, tomatoes and homemade pesto and follow with the pan-seared duck breast with prune sauce, honey glazed veggies, duck fat potatoes and pistachio whipped feta. There’s plenty of less formal fare, too – share a pizza or cold mezze selection while you're working up an appetite.

Hotel bar

Geometric mirrors, gold accents, disco balls and one giant gold bumble bee characterise the hotel’s namesake bar, and the drinks list is just as diverse; the fourteen-page menu spans everything from wine, beer, liquor and coffee (or a combination of the two), but it’s the cocktail list that draws a crowd. Choose from classic, signature, mocktail, or dessert options such as the Velvet Secret (vanilla vodka, coffee rum, espresso and orange bitters) and the Hazelnut Martini (Frangelico, vanilla vodka, double cream and cocoa powder). In the warmer months, opt for a refreshing Blood Orange Fizz (Beefeater orange, limoncello, prosecco, lemonade and angostura bitters) canalside on the terrace. 

 

Last orders

Village Brasserie’s all-day dining menu begins at 12 noon while the bar shakes and stirs until 11pm (2am Friday to Saturday).

Room service

You can order food from the brasserie menu up until 9pm, though the cocktails keep on flowing til 11pm.

Location

Photos Velvet Hotel location
Address
Velvet Hotel
2 Canal St
Manchester
M1 3HE
United Kingdom

In the heart of Manchester’s industrial core, Velvet occupies a prime spot along the city’s famously fabulous Canal Street.

Planes

Manchester airport is a 30-minute drive away, served by most of the main carriers.

Trains

Manchester Piccadilly station is a five-minute stroll from Velvet’s front door, with connections to all major cities in the UK.

Automobiles

There’s no parking on-site, but there are several car parks nearby – the NCP on Chorlton street is the closest, with overnight parking for £25.

Worth getting out of bed for

From the Hollies to the Hacienda, Manchester’s illustrious musical heritage continues to draw a crowd. There is a light that never goes out at Salford Lads Club, a community centre turned Smiths archive where fans of the city’s most melancholic quadruplet flock to strike a pose beneath the iconic facade crystalised in pop history by photographer Stephen Wright. Catch a gig or two at Night and Day Cafe or Band on the Wall, or go deep diving for a rare gem in one of the city’s many independent record stores. And it’s not just musical culture that keeps Manchester ticking; home to the largest LGBTQ community outside of London, Canal Street is the perfect spot for drag nights and all-night dancing. The city hosts a number of yearly events from the educational LGBTQ History Month and celebratory Manchester Pride – one of the largest parades in the UK – to the niche Great British Bear Bash, where fuzz fans can enjoy unique events like cabaret bingo ‘masquebearade’ parties. Speaking of beards, they’re somewhat of a uniform in the seethingly cool Northern Quarter, where design-forward boutiques, artisan coffee shops and eclectic architecture abound. Get crafty in the area’s Manchester Craft and Design Centre, where 30 independent makers offer workshops in everything from screen printing and watercolours to terrazzo tile making and calligraphy, catch a show at Home, a sprawling hub of contemporary theatre, film, art, music, or pay a visit to the CCCA, a leading gallery with a focus on artists of Chinese, East Asian and Southeast Asian heritage. Bookworms won’t be disappointed, either; take your pick from the Victorian Gothic John Rylands Library, Portico Library or Chetham's, a Hogwarthian maze of wood-panelled rooms (not to mention the oldest surviving English-speaking library in the world, founded in 1653) filled with antique books and a rather spooky table where the Elizabethan mathematician-cum-occultist Dr Dee supposedly summoned the devil, whose hoofprint left a telltale burn mark that can still be seen today. 

Local restaurants

Inside an old Victorian Court, Deansgate’s Hawksmoor is an elevated steakhouse with art-deco interiors, teal 1950s banquette seats and an enviable cocktail menu to boot. The Sunday roasts are a must: slow roast rump cooked over charcoal and served with beef-dripping roasties, Yorkshire puddings, carrots, greens, roasted shallots and lashings of bone marrow and gravy. For flavoursome small plates and locally-sourced produce, Another Hand is just the ticket, an intimate, open-kitchen dining experience with natural wine pairings.

Local cafés

While Viennoiserie bakery Pollen is a fair walk from the city centre, its croissant-slash-muffin inventions, stacked sourdough sarnies and accompanying views over Ancoats Marina are worth every step. Idle Hands Coffee, meanwhile, specialises in local roasts and homemade pies in the heart of the city centre.

Local bars

Low intervention wines and low-intervention walls make quite the pair at 10 Tib Lane, where stripped-back interiors, oysters and crafty concoctions hit all the right notes. If it’s cocktails you’re after, you can’t go wrong at Schofields; owned by bartender brothers Joe and Daniel, this old-world establishment features a library of classic titles and curated drinks to match – take a Martini with Anne Sexton or a Gin Rickey with Fitzgerald.

Reviews

Photos Velvet Hotel reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this grown-up glam hotel on Canal Street and unpacked their well-worn disco shoes and velveteen gowns, a full account of their break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Velvet Hotel in Manchester…

Manchester’s Canal Street is iconic for many reasons; as a part of a rich social history, as an example of the city’s industrial architecture, and of course – as a great night out. Now, with Velvet Hotel’s boutique boudoirs a firm fixture of the street, those looking to retire early from the village’s flamboyant festivities can do so in the sexiest of settings. Set in an old cotton warehouse, Velvet has transformed the building into four floors of individually-designed hedonistic havens where parquet flooring, mood-lit sage bedrooms, and minimalist, white marble bathrooms are fitted with black-out curtains, underfloor heating, and naturally, a fair share of velvet. Start at the hotel’s Village Brasserie, where British-Mediterranean fusion fare is served among gold-gilded mirrors and black leather seating, enjoy a canal side cocktail on the terrace or head straight for the dancefloor at Velvet bar where the resident DJ spins house classics into the wee hours each weekend.

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Price per night from $112.05

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