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I was a big fan of new technology until last night in Hotel Stupid.

The Holiday Inn in Media City, Salford Quays, Manchester sets out to provide the media luvvies exiled from London with a second home.

Sadly the word has not spread to the taxi-drivers at Piccadilly Station. 200 yards into our journey my man asked whether I could tell him where the hotel was. Having opened up google maps on my android I set about giving him directions. All went well till the phone rang, my directions ran out and we ended up in various housing estates in Whalley Range.

Arriving after an hour long ride (to do 4 miles), I was given an initiation ceremony in reception as to how to get to my room. This involved using a plastic card so often that I decided to go to the bar to plan my strategy. While at the bar, the complex code in the card was wiped by my mobile phone so that by the time I got to my room, I couldn’t get in.

Having re-programmed my room card at reception, I slumped into bed ~(after plugging in chargers for laptop, android and ipad. I had failed to notice the complex instruction manual beside my TV remote. After thirty minutes trying to get away from the welcome message from the very polite hotel managers, I returned to reception.

Clearly I was a total media dullard and I had to be given a lesson as to how to turn on the TV involving a four menu process with various buttons including an STB (anyone) which needed to be enabled , then disabled and then navigated to and from – God help us!

Another fifteen minutes was wasted trying to find the wardrobe- brilliantly camouflaged as a wall.

The Hotel itself is clearly designed by bar-code or the information of people’s behaviour that gan be gleaned from your Tesco card. My friends at Pensions DCisions would have loved it.

What little decor there is, is of paps touting unfeasible lenses at you. Wall to wall mirrors abound. The carpets are designed to remind you of studio floors with cable patterns randomly distributed where’er you go. There is no draught beer.

Hotel Stupid pathetically apes a boutique hotel without the core ingredients needed for any resting place- the capacity to relax the guest sufficient for them to sleep. No doubt they anticipate that most guests don’t sleep but live “lifestyle stupid” in a warm haze of cocaine and narcissism