/ / / / / / /

A Freehand New York? We're Not Hostile To That!

February 25, 2013 at 12:43 PM | by | Comments (0)

As usual, we were leafing through the NY Times Travel section this weekend, making mental notes about how we should plan on visiting East Frisia to try the tea, and, how we need to check out that newly reopened "Shalom" hotel in Tel Aviv, when something caught our eye.

It was in an article talking about the new trend of "stylish hostels" popping up in places like Mexico City, Singapore, Reykjavik and São Paulo. Of course, one of the more interesting "hotels" we recently reviewed was Freehand Miami, a hip $21/night hostel that's run by the Sydell Group (the same company responsible for The NoMad, Ace New York and Saguaro Palm Springs.)

Now, for the exciting part: the article casually mentions that the Sydell Group is planning to take the Freehand concept nationwide (yay!), and the next location will be New York (double yay!).

This is great news because, as the article correctly points out, "the US has been rather resistant to hosteling". Who knows why, but having spent many a trip in our early 20s backpacking around cheap, efficient European hostels, we think it's time for the US to catch on too.

As of now, NYC offers up a few very mediocre hostel options, in addition to hostel-inspired rooms at The Out NYC, The Bowery House and two Pod Hotels. But there's a difference between "hostel-inspired" and actually being a hostel.

One of the things we liked best about our stay at Freehand Miami was not just how cheap it was but also how much fun we had while staying there, whether we were cannon-balling into the pool or downing rum punches at the bar. We could see a Freehand doing very well indeed in a place like New York.

Now we just have to wait for the deets to emerge!

What about you? Is Freehand the kind of place you'd stay in New York? Or are hostels something you made use of in another life? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

[Photo: HotelChatter]

Hotels mentioned in this story

Comments (0)

Post a Comment

Join the conversation!

Not a member? .
Use of this Site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (effective 3/21/12) and Privacy Policy (effective 3/21/12). © Condé Nast. Your California Privacy Rights. All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.
Ad Choices