How are innovative hotels and brands developed and created? That was the topic of Hotels Curated NYC: Art + Innovation in Hospitality, a Friday afternoon conference-ette in the sleek upstairs space of Malt and Mash in the Meatpacking District. Read more
On an impulse, I stopped by the Hotel Chelsea the week before it closed two years ago for what was supposed to be a one-year renovation. As it turned out, this was the Chelsea’s last hurrah as the much-loved, occasionally reviled free spirit of the New York hotel scene. Read more
Coming soon to the top of the Conde Nast Building.
At last count, Times Square had 230 illuminated advertising billboards blazing away day and night.
So why is the proposed sign for Swedish retailer H & M, set to crown the Conde Nast Building at 4 Times Square by the end of the year, causing such a fuss?
For starters, it’s super big. With four 70-foot panels, H & M will dwarf rooftop behemoths like the GE sign that crowns 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the Met Life moniker looming over Park Avenue near Grand Central Station. Read more
It’s a tiny thing, but a treat at turndown is an easy way for a hotel to win points with its guests and differentiate itself from the competition — and airbnb. I know I’m grateful when something thoughtful and unexpected turns up at turndown. (I still use the tiny tub of mandarin and lemon lip balm left on the bedside table at the Crosby Street Hotel.) Read more
$200 a night: Central Park view at The Roger.
You’ll have to come to town in January.
But 12 hotels are offering rooms for $100 during the third annual New York Hotel Week, January 3 through 12, 2014.
Another $100 gets you 14 hotels in a spiffier range. And for $300 you can sample a pair of boutique hotels normally in the $400-plus range. Can Brooklyn Hotel Week be far behind? Read more
Conrad Hilton, Laurance Rockeeller and Harold Uris eye the future.
Normally, the New York Hilton isn’t one of those hotels that revels in its history with vintage photos and menus encased in glass in the lobby.
But on June 26th, the hotel celebrated its 50th anniversary with a big party in the airy duplex where Lucille Ball once lived. Read more
Move over, Manhattan. The most expensive American city for travelers this summer is Honolulu.
This isn’t to say New York City is a bargain; it comes in number 2 in the third annual Tripadvisor Tripindex guide, which lists the 10 priciest and 10 cheapest US cities for travelers. Still, this is one index where first place isn’t coveted. Read more
The news last week that the New York Hilton-Midtown plans to stop offering room service later this summer was a shocker. Envisioning a big player like the 1,980-room Hilton without food-bearing, cart-pushing servers is, at first blush, like imagining a hotel without fresh towels or porters or doors that lock.
Room service has been a basic amenity since it was popularized by the Waldorf Hotel, the 1893 forebear of the Waldorf=Astoria.
I know I’m a fan. I can recall a litany of memorable room service deliveries from a romantic breakfast for two at the Four Seasons New York, complete with a rolling white-clothed table bearing lemon ricotta pancakes nestled in a warming cupboard, to the midnight coffee – in a silver pot next to an orchid in a bud vase – my jetlagged husband and I poured happily at Honolulu’s Royal Hawaiian. Read more
You’re looking at a picture of the Excelsior Hotel on the Upper West Side. Is this the worst place to stay in New York City if you’re single?
It is according to a survey that asked singles to identify the top New York City hotels to be avoided by unattached men and women looking for a good time. Read more
Kristen McGinnis’s lacquered dining room.
The best hotel rooms are the ones filled with things you want to steal – like decorating ideas.
A great decorator show house is even better. The designers, of course, want you to hire them, but they have to put their ideas out there to lure you in. And this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House, the biggie of the bunch in New York City, is jam-packed with ideas ripe for the plucking. Read more