The Best Luxury Hotels to Book in Liverpool, England

Formby Hall, set in peaceful parkland, is where you can play on a championship golf course, be pampered in the spa and try your hand at clay pigeon shooting or archery – all just a 30-minute drive from Liverpool’s Albert Dock. Great for second-timers to the city who want more space, the hotel has bikes for hire and a chef who’s happy to rustle up a picnic, so there’s always the option of swapping sightseeing for a day in the nearby coastal nature reserve, with its beautiful dune-backed beach and resident red squirrels.

Most Malmaisons are conversions of historic buildings, but this is the chain’s lone purpose-built hotel, occupying a prime waterfront spot close to the Three Graces. Rooms look glam, following a makeover that replaced the original moody colour scheme with soft silver greys and modern geometric prints. Most lavish of the lot is the Kop Suite, where you get your own playroom (with table football and Technogym equipment) plus a wooden bathtub for two with panoramic river views.

As the name suggests, this city-centre accommodation is dedicated to Everton’s legendary centre-forward, but the hotel has gone easy on the football theme. Yes, there’s some memorabilia on display and lots of Everton blue in evidence, but the rooms will appeal to anyone who likes their decor glamorous and opulent, with ornate gilded mirrors, thick velvet curtains and huge rococo-style headboards. In the No 9 restaurant, the menu showcases regional produce such as Lancashire lamb, Conwy crab and cheese from local dairies.

Directly opposite The Dixie Dean is another footie-inspired hotel, named after former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. Even the standard rooms here don’t hold back, with quilted walls and whirlpool baths, but it’s the pool party suites that really get people talking. Prepare for your jaw to hit the floor as you enter the Laurent Perrier suite and clock the double-height room with its champagne-inspired decor, 25-foot (7.6m) mosaic pool, drop-down cinema screen and 12 double “cabins” (sleeping 24 people), all screened off by crushed-velvet curtains.

Just a couple of decades ago, the old maritime warehouse on the north side of Stanley Dock was in a pitiful state. Now, it’s been reborn as a luxury hotel, with impressive original features intact and modern-day luxuries added in. Rooms are huge and high-ceilinged, with Drench showers and egyptian cotton linens. The lavish basement spa offers thermal experiences and Espa treatments, and, after dark, popular Stanley’s Bar & Grill buzzes with locals as well as hotel guests.

Liverpool’s original boutique hotel is still one of the city’s finest places to stay at, with a winning location in the Georgian Quarter, bright rooms stylishly decked out in natural materials (slate, wood and stone), and an excellent in-house restaurant, The London Carriage Works. Now, things are getting even more luxurious: an ambitious 2020 expansion into a neighbouring Victorian building is adding more swish rooms and suites, a club room, a cinema and what promises to be a beautiful thermal spa.

As well as catering for budget-minded travellers, the Resident offers options for those with a bit more cash to splash. Top-of-the-range apartments here include split-level Junior Suites and, cream of the crop, the large Secret Garden Suite, which sleeps up to five and has its own private decked terrace. Staff can book tours, tickets and taxis or make restaurant reservations, and you can order-in wines and cocktails from the room service menu straight to your door.

Over on the Wirral side of the Mersey, on the edge of the pretty village of Thornton Hough, lies this stuccoed Italianate mansion, with chandeliers in the restaurants, water lilies on the ornamental pond and neat-freak-pleasing stripes mown into the lawns. The spa is the star here, offering Espa and Elemis treatments and plenty of other pampering opportunities, including a thermal zone, mud-therapy suite, outdoor hydro pools and a Roman-style indoor pool surrounded by Ionic columns.