[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."
For three hours (one of which includes an open bar), you can nosh on their aphrodisiac buffet and maybe even meet someone new. They'll be playing anti-Valentine's Day music, from "Love Stinks" and "You Give Love a Bad Name" to "Silly Love Songs" and "Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song."
You'll also be able to rub shoulders (and whatever else is available) with the beautiful people, hired though they may be. According to the official release, "Excruciatingly hot models, both male and female, will roam the room along with a bevy of paparazzi who are on hand to snap faux "new couple canoodling" photos for insta-emailing to an ex. Guests will also be able to upload these shots instantly to a shared Facebook or MySpace page."
That'll show `em!
Tickets are $45 a person, $75 for two, including hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and music.
The Barclay Intercontinental is not just a hotel for U.S. Open players. It's also a hotel for American Girl enthusiasts--namely girls ages 6 to whenever playing with dolls isn't cool anymore.
The hotel has a special check-in set up for you American Girl doll. The one you see here is Kaya, "a Nez Perce girl growing up in 1764."(Note: We played with American Girl dolls when the brand was called Pleasant Company and there were only three dolls--Samantha, Molly and Kirsten. We also had to order only from catalogs. This was before the internet people! Ok TMI.)
The Barclay, which bill itself as a business hotel, has cashed in on the craze for American Girls with their American Girl Place package (around $383 a night) which includes in-room munchies, a complimentary in-room movie, a doll bed (just for the night), and of course, the special check-in. Also your American Girl fan under the age of 12 gets to eat free in the hotel restaurant. Oh and did we mention the American Girl Place store is just a block away?
You can eat lunch there but it's $23 a person so in a sense, the Barclay is a deal. You are going to need your pennies after all to buy some of that American Girl gear.
Yesterday we met some friends at their hotel, the Intercontinental Barclay on 48th Street between Park and Lex, before we all headed out to the U.S. Open.
We noticed a whole lotta tennis bags in the lobby--at the front desk, on the chairs and on people's shoulders as they walked in and out. Normally, we just assumed the city is full of crazy tennis poseurs who want to be noticed. But later on that night, we spied one of the Bryan brothers--the freakishly good twin brothers doubles team--in the lobby, just a few hours after we watched them play in Arthur Ashe stadium. So it's safe to say that some actual tennis players are staying there. Along with some poseurs of course.
Meanwhile the Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Station has a whole bunch of Lexus cars out front with the "Official Car of the U.S. Open" painted on the sides. Whether or not real players are staying there, we can't say.
Even though Mid-August is indisputably the crappiest part of summer in Manhattan, the Millenium Hilton in the financial district is looking... not so crappy at all.
We tried booking a room for August 17th and found out that we could score one for under $200-- $194.65, to be precise. With that kickass rate, we don't care about the heat so much. Plus, who doesn't love an awesome indoor pool?
The only catch is that you have to make your reservation online and pay fully in advance, but if you're cool with that, then you've got a pretty sweet deal.
The only thing we've ever really heard about the Roger Smith Hotel was that a 6-foot-tall chocolate Jesus went up in its art gallery. So since we've been doing a bunch of Hotel Video Tours, we figured now is as good a time as any to find out what the rooms are like.
We got a look at Room 510, a junior suite overlooking Lexington Avenue. From our up-close inspection, some of the furniture could use sprucing up. That said, the details are well-considered: each room is hand decorated with fun lamps, unique beds and a hand-picked selection of reading material. (We loved the French country house meets Midwestern flea market lamps on a vintage credenza in 510.) Bathrooms are small, but do have tubs.
All in all, the Roger Smith exudes a little bit of a pied-a-terre/bed and breakfast feel: country home hospitality but in the big city. A lending library of DVDs and free WiFi are also nice touches, especially when rates for big junior suites are starting under $300.
The Dylan Hotel is introducing a new way of offering guests services and amenities--through an online shopping cart (whereas at the Bowery Hotel, people might be outside pushing a shopping cart.)
Guests can now pre-purchase extra amenities, services and even food before they ever get to the Dylan Hotel, all through the hotel's booking page. So it's similar to checking off smoking or non-smoking rooms when booking online but a little more advanced.
For instance, you can select your breakfast (with prices listed) and any special occasion items to help you celebrate like wine and flowers. You can also make a reservation at the hotel's restaurant, Benjamin, and arrange a car service from the area's airports.
As with any time you put trust you put in an online service, the chances for your order to get lost, mixed up or even lost are to be expected so we suggest calling to confirm.
Cubicle Dreamin' is a feature in which we ask the hotel mavens to take some time out of their busy work day, surf the Internet, and tell us what hotel they wish they could beam themselves to right that very second--all on the slave driving companies dime, of course. Oh, like these people aren't surfing aimlessly anyway--at least now their purposeless clicking will be cobbled together into useful hotel stories--we hope. Have a destination hotel you are just dying to leave your cube for? Send the story our way.
In this episode, Hotel Maven Amanda K escapes to Manhattan. Enjoy.
Until five minutes ago, I never knew that my idea of a perfect hotel actually existed, and I'm so cut up about the fact that I missed out on this when I visited NYC last year. Confession time: I'm a book-geek. Even while I'm typing this post, I've probably got a novel open on one side of the keyboard and the newest greatest travel narrative on the other. And that's why the ultimate hotel experience for me would be Manhattan's Library Hotel.
Just in case you've managed to remain as ignorant as me until now, the Library Hotel is built around the concept of (surprise) a library. The concept is really best explained by the librarian-hoteliers themselves:
The Library Hotel in New York City is the first hotel ever to offer its guest over 6,000 volumes organized throughout the hotel by the Dewey Decimal System. Each of the 10 guestrooms floors honors one of the 10 categories of the DDC and each of the 60 rooms is uniquely adorned with a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic within the category or floor it belongs to.
If you're not quite as intimate with the Dewey Decimal System as I am, perhaps you'd like to stay in the 400s (Languages) for a bit of French romance, the 700s (Arts) for classic architecture or popular music, or the 900s (History) if you want to, well, make history. My personal vote is for the 800s (Literature) where there'll definitely be enough reading material to keep me off the streets for however long I stay. I won't be needing any Wifi, in-house movies or even much breakfast while I'm at the Library.
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by Tim L.
