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
It’s time for my annual over-the-shoulder look at the year that was in New York City hotels.
If New York felt unusually crowded in 2013 there was good reason. The city hosted 54.3 million visitors, up from 52.7 in 2012 and nearly 20 million more than in 2002.
And while some of them no doubt stayed with friends, relatives and Airbnb, others helped fill the 30 million hotel room nights sold, up 1 million from 2012. The results? Visitors on average paid a pricey $296 a night, and hotels enjoyed an 87.8 percent occupancy rate. Read more
Overlooking the parade finale from the lobby patio
When Macy’s changed the route of New York’s marquee parade from Seventh to Sixth Avenue in 2012 it proved a blow to visitors who like watching Hello Kitty & Company float by from a hotel room.
Seventh Avenue’s eight hotels overlooking the parade route dwarfed the five along Sixth Avenue and Central Park West, both in size and number. But this summer the Courtyard Marriott Manhattan/Herald Square added 167 rooms to the mix, many with direct views of Macy’s, the parade’s grand finale.
And this week brought more good news for parade lovers. Read more
For 364 days of the year the most desirable rooms at the new Courtyard Marriott Manhattan/Herald Square are those with views of the Empire State Building. But that changes on Thanksgiving Day.
The new 167-room hotel has the good fortune to sit on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 35th Street, a block away from Macy’s Department Store and directly above the street where Snoopy, Hello Kitty and all the other balloons, floats and bands pass by in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Read more