Liverpool’s new Hard Days Night hotel has grabbed its share of headlines and breakfast TV slots, but if they tempt the fans to flock here in Beatlemania-style throngs, my guess is they’ll be disappointed. The problem’s not the hotel, which is perfectly nice. It’s the theme.

You’d have thought you could have a lot of fun with this – yellow submarines, helter-skelters, Blue Meanies running around, LSD on the cocktail list – but the owners have gone for a more low-key, upmarket approach.

Initial impressions are good. It cost a reported £22m to convert the grand old Central Buildings, on North John Street, and you can see where the money went. The main staircase, with a faux-gold banister, leads to the nice lobby-cum-brasserie.

As they say round here, it’s dead classy: all trendy sofas, mood lighting and a fair bit of Fab Four memorabilia.

Some of it is vintage stuff – period photos, limited-edition prints of John Lennon drawings, musical scores. But much is original, specially commissioned “Beatles art”. It’s this stuff that the hotel is hanging its hat on. According to the rather gushing publicity, “what will make the Hard Days Night so totally different will be the unique and exclusive artwork”.

It’s woeful. The lion’s share is by Shannon, designated “the world’s greatest Beatles artist” by the mayor of Liverpool in the 1990s. I’m no art critic, but I know a dodgy airbrushed portrait when I see one – I grew up with 1970s Athena posters – and seeing so many together was like a nasty acid flashback.

The archive stuff is better. There’s a genuinely engaging sequence of period mono shots spiralling up the staircase, from 1950s Quarrymen through to a modern McCartney. And down in the basement there’s a fun, if incomplete, wall of fame, with celebrities holding up their favourite album. Well, celebrities is stretching a point. Chas and Dave like the White Album; Howard from Take That goes for Sgt Pepper’s; and David Dickinson plumps for Abbey Road. Damn, I used to like that one.

The other public areas include a couple of pleasant enough bars. The main one, Bar Four, looks like a gentleman’s club-cum-brothel, plays Frank Sinatra and wouldn’t let in nonresidents wearing trainers. (What would the sneaker-clad working-class hero think of that?) And there’s Blakes restaurant, named after Peter, who designed the cover for Sgt Pepper’s. It’s a good, airy space, with decent modern British food and strikingly enormous net-covered lamp shades, like jumbo versions of the sort of thing Lennon’s Aunt Mimi might have had in her parlour.

Blakes is also the only place in the hotel that has a constant Beatles soundtrack. It soon became obvious why the whole place isn’t flooded with it. I like them, but it’s only when you sit through 20 or so random Beatles numbers that you realise what a quantity of merry old rubbish they recorded. After I’ll Get You, Not a Second Time, I’m Happy Just to Dance with You and Boys – Ringo should never have been allowed to sing – I was ready to join the Monkees fan club.

Incidentally, the advance publicity has made much of Beatles movies being on a permanent loop, but on my visit, there weren’t any playing on the screens in the public areas, and the in-room telly system had just one on offer. A Hard Day’s Night, of course. It also stated that watching it would cost me £8. I’m sorry? Eight quid to watch A Hard Day’s Night in the Hard Days Night hotel? They’re ’avin a laff.

Hard Days Night (0151 236 1964, www.harddaysnighthotel.com ) has doubles from £120. Stephen Bleach travelled to Liverpool with Virgin Trains (0870 010 4490, www.virgintrains.com )

Talking of the rooms, they’re comfy and classy, but you could be pretty much anywhere. The standard ones are smallish, with all the stuff you expect at this level: comfortable bed, fluffy dressing gowns, designer lamp shades. The only Beatlesy thing is a Shannon artwork above each bed: mine showed Paul McCartney seemingly growing out of Lennon’s head. Neither looked too happy about it.

At breakfast in the Brasserie, the piped music was a string quartet. I asked one of the staff – who were unfailingly chirpy and helpful, by the way – why it wasn’t the Fab Four. “Well, it’d drive yer mad, wouldn’t it, if it was Beatles all the time?” he said.

Quite. And there’s the problem: the owners want to pull in the hardcore fans, but they need the general public, too, so they didn’t want to ram the Mop Tops down our throats. What they’ve ended up with is some dodgy art and some decent photos in a nice, Malmaisonish hotel. It’s fine, but not worth paying a premium for.

The advertised standard rate is £170 per room, which is just too much. You can pick up rooms on the website for £120, which is more like it. But here’s a tip: Liverpool has its own Malmaison (0151 229 5000, www.malmaison.com ), in a good spot on the docks, and the rack rates are cheaper – weekday rooms are currently £105. They’ve got in-room CD-players, too. So, go there, pop on a copy of Revolver, and you’ve got much the same thing – though without the mutant paintings. And that’s worth paying for in itself.

Five reasons to go to Liverpool this year

Visit the Bluecoat (www.thebluecoat.org.uk ) when it reopens on March 15 after a £12.5m refit, for decent modern art, plenty of interactivity and lots for families

Hear the current crop of the city’s most exciting bands at Korova (39-41 Fleet Street; www.korova-liverpool.com )

Drop in for a mojito in the Lady Chapel at Alma de Cuba (Seel Street; www. alma-de-cuba.com), a spectacular, if slightly sacrilegious, bar set in St Peter’s, the city’s oldest church

Come between May 28 and June 8 for the comedy festival – more intimate than Edinburgh, and the Scouse hecklers can be as funny as the performers

Book tickets to see the Gustav Klimt exhibition at Tate Liverpool (www.tate.org.uk/Liverpool ), which opens on May 30. It should be dazzling

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