Good Rate :: Getting Irish at Fitzpatrick's Grand Central Hotel

March 4, 2008 at 12:52 PM | by Tim L. | Comments (0)

[Ed. Note: Welcome to our Good Rate/Bad Rate feature where we look at hotel prices in the same region and decide which one most deserves your hard-earned benjamins. Rates quoted here were captured on March 4, 2008 and are subject to change. Enjoy.]

A survey from the American Society of Travel Agents found that New York City will be a less popular destination for Americans this year, with the city dropping from number three to number seven on the list of desirable places to go. If the comments on the Budget Travel blog story linked above are any indication, it's the sky-high hotel prices that are turning people off.

As one person noted, "We are all savvy NYC hotel searchers. No one could come up with a room for less than $300. Even my favorite, cheap-o hotel Hotel 17, was $275."

So we wondered, is it at all possible to find a deal in mid-March, when this year that means running into St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Santa Semana, and Spring Break all around the same time? We plugged in dates from St. Paddy's Day through Easter to see.

The verdict? Recession or not, come to New York with lots of capacity on your credit card. On Expedia the Manhattan digs start at $141 that week, for the 1.5 star New World Hotel in Chinatown. It jumps from there to $199 for Days Hotel Broadway, way on the upper West Side, then $259 for a place inexplicably called Manhattan Broadway Budget Hotel. (It's all relative we suppose.) We liked the looks of the $288 a night Park South Hotel, but we try to avoid places that have a Christmas 2007 package listed on their website deals page--in March of '08.

So this week's Good Rate nod goes to the 3-star Fitzpatrick Grand Central Hotel, coming in a wee dram under $300 a night before taxes for a deluxe room (or about $100 more for a junior suite). Billed as an "Irish hotel near New York's Grand Central Terminal," it's got its own Irish pub for the St. Paddy's celebration and you're only six blocks away from St. Patrick's Cathedral for Easter.

You don't have to slum it here either: rooms come with terrycloth robes, a mini fridge, wi-fi, turndown service, and 24-hour room service. It gets generally positive reviews on TripAdvisor and it's in a convenient location.

[guest photo from Tripadvisor]

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