Robert DeNiro's Greenwich Hotel Cancelled Our Reservation

Yes, it is true, this is not an April Fools' Day joke, we reserved a room tonight for the Greenwich Hotel opening, via the Greenwich Hotel website and though our reservation went through last week, late yesterday we received word that our reservation had been canceled at the request of the hotel. A phone call to the hotel's PR reps and the hotel itself confirmed that they were not going to let us sleep there tonight.

As loyal readers know we have been following the opening of the DeNiro/Drukier hotel project since the middle of 2004. We followed the constantly "coming soon" North Moore Street hotel through loud construction, name changes, name calling, and endless delays. So it should come as no surprise that today, the hotel's first day accepting guests, we had a reservation to stay at the hotel.

Many times you readers send us first photos and reviews, which we love. But other times a hotel is woven so deep into our sites fabric -- like when Gramercy Park opened, or back when Wynn Las Vegas opened, we decide to go to the public opening ourselves. We are, after all, hotel geeks. In these cases we simply use our credit card to book a room at the buzzworthy hotel and reviewed it as soon as we can for you, just like our readers and tipsters do for us.

We find it important to take candid snapshots for you to see. That way, you see what exactly the room rate will get you, and not simply the glossy professional suite photos the hotel wants you to see -- we all look better in the low light, ya know? This is also why we encourage y'all to send us these types of photos, and you do in droves -- thank you! Just last week Donovan House opened in DC and hotel maven Flying Mermaid sent us a bunch of great snaps of the place.

So yes, we had a room booked at the Greenwich Hotel tonight. Juliana was going to stay there. In fact, she was excited to stay there.

However, our credit card was flagged by the hotel, Focker style, and we were informed this weekend that we needed to agree not to publish any images that resulted from our hotel stay. Long story short, the hotel has an embargo on photos with some international publication with a long lead time, how archaic is that?

We were then offered a chance to come back in a few weeks at a media rate at a time when the hotel would be happy to provide us with photographs for the website. We declined the invitation.

Late yesterday afternoon we received the following email from the hotel's PR guy:

Per our discussion, this is to confirm that your April 1 reservation has been canceled.

We abbreviated the email, but you get the gist.

At that point we still wanted to see the hotel, so we reached out to the hotel's PR staff today to try and come up with a compromise.

Unfortunately, the hotel stuck by its decision to cancel our reservation.

So now it is up to you. At this point we hardly care about staying at the Greenwich hotel, let alone what it looks like inside, but some of you might. So if you are inside the Greenwich Hotel or staying in a room there, send us some photos. Your fellow hotel mavens should know what it looks like, for real, before they drop $750.00 on a room.

SEND YOUR HOTEL GREENWICH PHOTOS HERE

Comments (11)

Return to » Robert DeNiro's Greenwich Hotel Cancelled Our Reservation

Heard the same thing happened to Roger Ebert.

got a photo, through the bars...

Is this where the hotel's supposed to say that all publicity is good publicity??? Poor Juliana :-(

Since it's opening just in time for DeNiro's Tribeca Film Festival, seems they're offering closed-set reviews only.

How can they legally do this? You're a paying customer, non? Are they forbidding cameras with every hotel guest?

I'm confused. Did you tell the hotel you were coming from the site? Where's a super secret hotel maven when you need one?

You should really look into taking legal action. Are you card-carrying press? Did they present their requests to you in writing?

This smells fishy.

@ patricksw -- no we didn't tell the hotel we were coming for the site. Just used our credit card to book a room, just like any other guest would.

@koffeepothead -- no we are not "card-carrying press". a pr rep for the hotel called me on a Saturday and asked if the person staying in the room planned to take photos and publish them on HotelChatter. Then emailed me on Monday canceling our reservation.

here's a pic from Vanity Fair here. i keep thinking of Meet the Fockers for some reason.

A good blog always comes-up with new and exciting information and while reading I have feel that this blog is really have all those quality that qualify a blog to be a good one. mcat

Thanks for sharing this. It was really an interesting and informative article. Pretty cool post!
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