What's the Difference Between Vikram Chatwal's Stay.Hotel and The Quality Inn? Not Much.

October 3, 2008 at 5:07 PM | by Jenna | Comment (1)

Ah! So that's why we didn't hear more about Vikram Chatwal's brand new Stay.Hotel before its official unveiling earlier this week: the property morphed into the Stay from its former identity, The Quality Inn Times Square, relatively seamlessly.

And now we're kinda wondering if maybe the place is basically a Quality Inn with a baller lobby.

Here's what happened: we hopped over to TripAdvisor this morning hoping that perhaps someone had already submitted the hotel's first TripAdvisor review. But when we found a handful of Stay.Hotel reviews from September, we were disappointed in ourselves for not stalking Tricky Viky with our usual gusto: it turns out the place was quietly operating as the Stay.Hotel for a while, but only recently had its official "unveiling."

We called the hotel to see what the deal was. The fairly knowledgeable woman who answered the phone explained to us that the hotel really just switched lobbies -- as in, the new swanky lobby our tipster showed us was the new Stay.Hotel lobby, and the old Quality Inn lobby space was being turned into the restaurant.

As for the rooms? We're told that nothing was renovated -- the decor just changed. You know, like, "curtains and stuff." Which is maybe why guests have been totally shocked at the teensy size of them. Even for New York.

Don't get us wrong: we are totally into the trippy lobby design and the cool decor, and we were willing to look past the gimmicky name. But it seems like that nebulous period in between the hotel's Quality Inn Times Square days and its official unveiling as the Stay.Hotel was not particularly enjoyable for guests.

Laurat72 apparently got caught in the grey area:

The hotel is very nice inside apart from the terrible looking construction site next to the hotel. I believe they are adding a new restaurant. It is quite noisy and dusty at times. My room was small, I suppose it's New York, but was tastefully designed. However, it was missing something as it just did not feel like a comfortable hotel room like those at the Hilton or Marriott or even some of the smaller boutique properties at which I have stayed.

So they were definitely letting guests stay there during renovations. Jaybird68 reports:

The lobby area looks great and it must be newly complete but I am not sleeping in the lobby. My room was very small but nicely decorated. It was very clean but dull and tight. You will have to take the stairs all the time as the elevator does not work properly.

And again with the small size of the rooms:

rooms were to [sic] small- couldn't fit 2 suitcases one elevator which broke down on the morning of our departure!!!

Ca2671 also said the rooms were way too small for two people.

Yikes. What's the deal here? If you've stayed at the Stay.Hotel, let us know. Is it more than just a Quality Inn with a baller lobby?

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