The Empress Hotel

The Empress takes up a broad Victorian terrace on Central Promenade in Douglas, a cream facade rising to a run of steep gables and finials. A glazed conservatory stretches the full width of the ground floor, facing the bay.

You come in off the promenade pavement through that conservatory, past flagpoles and clipped shrubs with hydrangeas in the beds behind. It is a large building and it makes no attempt to look like anything else.

Coral walls and parquet

The public rooms carry the character. A curved balustraded lobby steps down into a lounge of coral-pink walls, teal and rust velvet tub chairs, and framed black-and-white photographs. Past that sit a bar with a curved counter and mirror, a parquet-floored restaurant, a conservatory dining room lit from above, and function rooms laid out for weddings and banquets. A sunroom lined with window seating looks straight out to the water, and there is more lounge space than most seafront hotels bother to keep.

Bay-facing and courtyard bedrooms

Bedrooms run warm and traditional: burgundy runners and cushions, timber or upholstered headboards, wall lights, a desk and a kettle. Some face the bay, others the inner courtyard, and a few add a seating area with a sofa. The penthouse suite opens onto a balcony above the promenade with the beach and the headland in view. A lift serves the upper floors, and the bathrooms have been redone in dark stone-effect tile with black fittings and heated rails.

Straight out onto the front

Douglas Beach is across the road, and the rest of Douglas runs from the door: the shops, the restaurants and the ferry terminal at the far end of the bay.

Who books it

Anyone who wants a sea-facing room, a bar downstairs and the whole town reachable on foot.