It seems the Standard High Line NYC isn’t the only big city hotel to serve up rooms with unexpected views – for those looking in.
Over the long summer weekend images from the 25 Hours Hotel Bikini, a new, 10-story hotel in Berlin, burned up the internet and landed in The Daily Mail, Fox News and Deadstate.org. Read more
I can’t say I’ve ever been tempted to sleep outdoors in New York City. Remember the scene in Rear Window where the couple snoozing on the fire escape gets doused in a downpour? Read more
I’m a fan of decorator show houses for the same reasons I love hotels. The best create rooms with a heady atmosphere where you can step into another world and try on a different life.
And like a cleverly designed hotel, a good show house is jam-packed with decorating ideas ripe for picking.
This year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, the big kahuna of New York’s show house scene, serves up an added bonbon for hotel enthusiasts. It’s at a hotel, the silky New York Palace. Read more
Nothing promotes time travel like a grand hotel. Step inside and you’re whisked to another era where you can imagine yourself trading stories with Winston Churchill or Grace Kelly, Cole Porter or the Duchess of Windsor, albeit with locally sourced menus and WiFi.
New York’s Waldorf Astoria is one of these full-throttle time machines. If walking into its soaring Art Deco lobby doesn’t deposit you in 1931 or 1945 or whatever 20th-century moment you crave, Waldorf Astoria, a new book by William Alan Morrison should do the trick (Arcadia Publishing; $21.99). Read more
Every year or so we’re treated to a citywide exhibition of large objects decorated by artists, like upright pianos or fiberglass cows. So why not eggs?
The Fabrege Big Egg Hunt, as you’ve no doubt heard, is on, with 250 gigantic egg sculptures adorned by artists, architects and creative types like Bruce Weber, Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Carolina Herrera, Jacques Torres and William Wegman. Read more
Earlier this month I attended the opening party for the new Courtyard Marriott Manhattan/Chelsea, a 273-room “sliver” hotel built from the ground up in New York’s once-flourishing Fur District. (If you visit, check out the clever stone reliefs of fox heads on a nearby building.) Read more
Since this item posted Stayful, a site that brought Priceline strategies to boutique hotels, has joined the many sites that have fallen (details here). A shame. It was a neat idea.
No joke. The year is young, but so far 2014 New York hotel prices are trending lower than industry observers expected.
“Hotels in New York are not experiencing as high levels of occupancy as last year, at least from what we’re hearing anecdotally,” says Cheryl Rosner, co-founder and CEO of Stayful, a bidding website specializing in boutique hotel deals. “We were forecasting higher rates, but we’re not seeing them.” Read more
What appeals to you when you see a hotel room? Your preferences may say as much about your gender and age as your driver’s license, according to a new study from the College of Hospitality and Technology Leadership at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manitee. Read more
Guests at five-star hotels expect a cushy bed when they’re tucked in for the night. Still, the vaunted Four Seasons mattress comes with an extra sprinkling of fairy dust. Read more
No hotel has ever won an Oscar. But that does not mean hotels haven’t had close ties with the Academy Awards over the years. Read more