Not long ago, we heard from The NY Times that The Royalton Hotel's facelift failed to recruit the glamorous patrons who packed the lobby bar, Brasserie 44, in the 90s.
And now Times reviewer Denny Lee dishes about his lackluster stay last week. Like the investment bankers and magazine editors who lament the hotel's transformation from swank-glam to glam-glam, Lee's visit to The Royalton carries an air of nostalgia. He spends most of the Check In, Check Out column listing what is no longer present at the hotel rather than appreciating its new amenities.
The red door is gone. So is that waterfall urinal. In fact, so little remains of Philippe Starck's iconic lobby that it's hard to remember that the Royalton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan was the prototype that launched a thousand boutique hotels...gone is the dark and moody nightclub; in its place, bright woods and brassy rails, almost like a luxury liner.
The only changes he notes are flat-screen TVs, iPod docks, and pay-per-day WiFi. One notable attribute of the old hotel has remained, Lee discovered -- the ditzy staff. They screwed up his check-in ("the computers are acting crazy") and pestered him about his Manhattan address ("Why are you staying here?").
By the end of the story, Lee's frustration is palpable. In true surly New Yorker form, he ends the story grumbling that the formerly hip Midtown hotel, now tamed, is just another mediocre place to spend $500 a night to sleep in Manhattan.
The review itself is hardly flattering. There's nothing particularly bad about the place, the article says, but:
The hotel is far from stylish, and the drab and featureless interior seemed, at best, like a nice Holiday Inn. Rather than applauding its virtue, you end up wishing the Orchard had been more wasteful...It felt like sleeping in a plain cardboard box.
Though the rooms are low on luxury, the breakfast buffet sounds nice with granola and organic coffee on offer. Just don't have too much. This is a green hotel after all:
The toilet...did an amazing job with a small gulp of water, though the recycled bathroom tissue was not exactly soft.
Coincidentally, HotelChatter spent a night at the hotel this past weekend and we'll have our take on this green hotel later this week.
OMG--the cat's out of the bag! The New York Times has discoveredThe Bowery Hotel. Intrepid reporter Denny Lee checked in to find out what it's like at this completely under-the-radar hotel down on--get this!--New York's old Skid Row. Imagine that!
Ok, ok, after we got past all the faux hype in the review, what did we learn about the property? Not much we didn't already know:
The latest venture from Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson, who created the Maritime Hotel and numerous boîtes, the hotel evokes the Gilded Age of red waistcoats, hand-set bricks and wood-paneled elevators. And the views from the upper floors are positively grand. So what if you might have to step over a few vestigial bums to get there?
Funny, we've been telling you about all this for months. The only bit of news the Times brings to the party is that the restaurant, Gemma, still isn't open. Hmm, just give them six to eight weeks, k?
The Hotel de Rome, which despite the name is in Berlin, has all the trappings of a top-notch downtown hotel. The building is a converted bank, with the vault now turned swimming pool. Rooms are super-huge with price tags to match. And the bathroom is full of schmancy products and heated towel racks.
But that didn't do the trick for Denny Lee, who recently checked in for a New York Times article. Maybe it was the lack of WiFi, or the insane $26 a day fee for wired internet that got him miffed. Or it could've been the dicey service:
An empty minibar shouldn't require three follow-up visits and a dozen apologies delivered with sheepish grins. More regrets came when breakfast (omelet and coffee for 16 euros) arrived 15 minutes past the promised time of 7 a.m. The front desk, to its credit, removed it from the bill without prompting, but not before issuing another apology.
Rooms at the Hotel de Rome start at $555. $555? Pass the Jack Daniels Denny.
Finally, Gramercy Park Hotel has gotten its "Check In: Check Out" review from the NY Times, although we're not too sure if Denny Lee enjoyed it.
Although impressed with the mélange of styles from rococo to downright eclectic, Lee claims he can "almost sense the [hotel's] built-in expiration date."
Lee also offers up detailed decor and style descriptions that we, and others who lack an interior design degree, did not use.
My room, No. 1108, was grand if somewhat cluttered, sporting a baroque style that was hard to place: Old World luxury meets postmodern iconoclasm? But that is precisely the point. There was just enough design alchemy to keep the eye guessing: ripe colors (jade walls and raspberry drapes), fuzzy textures (velvet headboards and tasseled chairs) and clashing patterns (Spanish needlepoint and Art Nouveau lines). Despite an overstuffed green sofa and marshmallow-soft king-size bed, a leather-stitched table sat four comfortably for dinner. Notably absent were any sleek lines, save for the plasma television tucked above a mahogany liquor cabinet.
He also mentions that almost everything in the room was for sale. We think with starting rates at $550, you may not have enough left over to buy the scented $90 candle. Yet most of the hotel's current clientele--"included well-tanned Europeans, gay Hollywood hipsters, Midwestern housewives, Hong Kong fashion buyers"--probably will. (Hey! How did those desperate housewives get in there?)
Lee's stay wasn't without problems. Construction noise was a bother as well as the room service. It took several calls to get his needs precisely met, yet he still found the staff competent and "not merely good looking."
We're glad to hear the staff has managed to stay competent nearly two months after opening as we always thought this might be Ian's biggest game-changer. Yet we are disappointed Lee didn't mention anything about the place being a "scary gothic sex castle."
What do you think about Ian's latest hotel creation? Game-changing or does it have a "built-in expiration date?"
The New York Times and travel scribe Denny Lee recently checked out Chicago's young designer hotel, The James. So what was their verdict? Overall they liked the place and were happy to see a boutique hotel added to the chain game downtown.
Denny finds the rooms "homey...in a modern airport kind of way". We're not exactly sure the two could mix, but we'll let it slide. We'll also try to waive off the reviewer's disappointment in the designer furniture knock offs:
A leather-and-metal chair bore a shameless resemblance to a Barcelona Chair by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (who lived in Chicago). A dark wood bench recalled George Nelson's Slat Bench. And tucked into a dining alcove was an oval table that was a clear knockoff of Eero Saarinen's Tulip Table.
Oddly enough, it was the bathroom that impressed D. Lee:
Chic, like the locker room of an upscale spa. Tucked behind a sliding door, the bathroom had chocolate-colored slate tiles, hard-to-pronounce toiletries, piles of fresh-smelling towels and a shallow sink on a marble countertop. Waffle-print bathrobes hung in an oak wardrobe. Too bad there wasn't a deeper tub to complete the illusion.
2 Comments - Add Yours
by ced138
