Seeing as New Hampshire is on the smaller side (it’s the 9th smallest state by land mass) and we didn’t have a ton of potential things to do in the state, we decided to only spend 10 days there on our 50 state road trip.
Visiting New Hampshire in the summer isn’t cheap, but we found a great option when using hotel points – the Residence Inn Manchester Downtown. Residence Inn is part of the Marriott Bonvoy program and is an all-suite brand where every suite has a full kitchen.
It was good value when using points and had the added benefit of being downtown which meant we were able to easily walk around the city to explore a little. It’s a nice new hotel (it opened in 2020), has good amenities and there’s a decent breakfast selection in the morning.
Here’s a review of our stay at the Residence Inn Manchester Downtown.
Check-In
It was a 6 hour drive from the Airbnb we’d been staying at in the Finger Lakes to Manchester, so we didn’t arrive until 7pm. We’d received an email from the hotel on the morning of stay stating we had to call or email them by 6pm to let them know we’d be arriving that day or otherwise they’d charge us a no-show fee of one night. That was strange as we’ve never had a hotel require that before and I’m not sure the reasoning behind it. I’m glad we’d replied though as we arrived a little later than originally expected.
At the time of our stay I had Titanium status with Marriott which meant we were eligible for room upgrades. The only room type bookable with points had been a studio suite and at the time of booking I’d hoped there’d be one bedroom suites available when checking in. However, the hotel was sold out of those for at least some nights of our stay and so we had to make do with the studio suite.
King Studio Suite
We were assigned room 204. When entering the room the bathroom was on the left, the kitchen on the right, the living area straight ahead and the bedroom ahead on the left.
Kitchen
As I mentioned earlier, all rooms at Residence Inn properties have a kitchen. This includes a full-sized fridge-freezer, microwave, dishwasher and stove top.
In the cupboards and drawers there were place settings for four people, cookware, silverware, etc.
Living Area
Between the kitchen and living room area there was a high table with chairs that could be used as a dining table or workspace.
The living area itself had a sleeper sofa and armchair with an ottoman, but there was no coffee table.
On the far side of the room there was an actual work desk and chair, along with a dresser with a TV on top.
Bedroom
The bedroom area had a king bed. Both sides of the bed had lamps, power outlets and storage drawers.
The room’s closet had bedding for the sleeper sofa, an iron, ironing board and luggage rack.
Bathroom
The bathroom had a walk-in shower. Rather than having a shower curtain or doors covering the length of the shower, there was only a shower guard covering about two-thirds of the way. I was a little apprehensive about that because sometimes when hotels have showers of that nature the water ends up on the bathroom floor, but that didn’t end up being an issue.
Rather than having small disposable toiletry bottles, there were larger wall-mounted bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash. Well, there was probably meant to be body wash, but there were two bottles of shampoo instead. We had our own soap and body wash with us, so we didn’t end up asking the front desk for a different bottle.
Overall we liked our room. It felt spacious enough for only being a studio suite rather than a one bedroom suite, it was clean and our room was quiet.
Breakfast
Breakfast is free for all guests at the Residence Inn Manchester Downtown. It’s served from 6am-9:30am on weekdays and 7am-10:30am on weekends and on holidays.
There was a sign just outside of the breakfast area that shared what guests could expect at breakfast:
On top of the additional options listed above, they sometimes had other alternative items. For example, on the morning I took the photos below there were sausage biscuits and some kind of omelet bites.
Amenities
Guest Laundry
Residence Inn is an extended stay brand and so their properties all have guest self-laundry facilities. The property in downtown Manchester has five washing machines and five dryers that cost $3 per load. Something that’s particularly useful is that you can pay by card rather than needing to have a stack of quarters.
Fitness Room
There’s a decent sized fitness room with cardio equipment and weights. I appreciated that the temperature could be controlled by guests as not all hotels let you change that and leave it far too warm in their fitness rooms.
Swimming Pool
In addition to the fitness room, there’s an indoor swimming pool if you want to go for a swim or just splash around. The pool wasn’t very large though and there wasn’t a whirlpool either.
Business Center
If you need to use a computer during your stay and/or need to print something off, you can do that at their business center.
Bar
Opposite the front desk there’s a bar area where you can get drinks in the evening. I’m not sure what hours it’s open though.
Pantry
To the left of the front desk there’s a pantry area where you can buy drinks, snacks, frozen meals, toiletries, etc.
The hotel even had signature scent candles for sale which I’ve never seen at any other Residence Inns.
Pet Policy
The Residence Inn Manchester Downtown is a pet-friendly hotel. There’s a $100 pet fee which is charged on a per stay basis rather than per night. That makes it an expensive pet fee if you’re only staying one or two nights, but far more reasonable if you’re staying for longer like we did (we were there 10 nights).
You can have one pet per room and there’s a weight limit of 40lbs. I’m not sure how strictly that’s enforced though, so if you have a larger dog than that it could be worth giving them a call to see if they’d be willing to accept them.
The hotel has some mulchy areas in its parking lot, but Veteran’s Memorial Park is opposite the hotel at the back and so is a great place to walk your dog. It seems like Manchester has a fairly large homeless population and quite a few of them hang out in Veteran’s Memorial Park. However, they always kept themselves to themselves and never hassled anyone that I saw. I’d often take Truffles out for a walk after midnight and always felt safe as the main walkways through the park are pretty well lit.
Service
Despite staying at the hotel for 10 days, we didn’t need to have many interactions with the staff there. They were always friendly whenever we did need to stop by the front desk for something though.
Wi-Fi
The hotel offers complimentary standard Wi-Fi for all guests. You can pay $4.95 per day to upgrade to enhanced internet; this upgraded internet is complimentary for those with Marriott Bonvoy elite status of Gold or higher, or if you have an eligible Marriott co-branded credit card. Shae and I both had to work during our stay including Zoom calls and we had no issues with the internet there.
Check-In & Check-Out Times
You can check in at the Residence Inn Manchester Downtown from 4pm, while check-out is at 11am.
Location
The hotel is in a great location downtown. It’s right next to SNHU Arena if you’ll be attending events there and is only a short drive or walk to a Market Basket grocery store. It’s also just off Elm St which runs through downtown and so it’s within walking distance of tons of restaurants and bars along that stretch.
Concord – New Hampshire’s state capital – is 20 minutes to the north, while the cute city of Portsmouth is about an hour to the east.
Parking
Parking is complimentary and they give you a hanger to go on your rearview mirror to show that you’re a guest at the hotel. There’s a limit of one car per room though; if you have an additional vehicle, I’m not sure if you have to pay extra to park there or if you have to find parking elsewhere.
Cost
Residence Inn is one of Marriott brands. We booked our stay using Marriott Bonvoy points; they were charging 16,000 points per night during our dates and so it should’ve cost us 160,000 points. However, Marriott has a ‘Stay 5, pay for 4’ benefit on award stays regardless of whether you have status with them or not. That reduced our redemption from 160,000 points to 128,000 points, or an average of 12,800 points per night.
The cash rate when I booked our stay 10 months before our stay was $290.78 per night. That meant we got excellent value by using Marriott points – it gave us a 2.27cpp (cents per point) redemption rate which is about triple the value you can normally expect to get from their points.
Final Thoughts
We had a great stay at the Residence Inn Manchester Downtown. It was in an ideal location for exploring downtown, our room was well-equipped, clean and quiet and the hotel had some good amenities. While I’d never pay almost $300 per night to stay there, it was excellent value using points.
Truffles Approval Rating
Truffles gives this hotel four paws out of four – pawfect! The pet fee was reasonable for a 10 night stay, it was quiet which meant she was quiet and it was nice being right next to a large park.
Our Rating
Room = 4.4 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.5 / 5
Food = 4.4 / 5
Location = 4.6 / 5
Service = 4.2 / 5
Overall Value = 4.5 / 5 (based on booking with points)
Total = 4.43 / 5
Address
Residence Inn, 40 Lake Ave, Manchester, NH 03101
[…] – This is an easy one seeing as we only stayed in one hotel – the Residence Inn Manchester Downtown. It doesn’t just win by default though – we did enjoy our stay […]