As a group, New York City hotels aren’t very green. It’s not for want of trying. Many reside in old buildings constructed long before sustainability was on the radar. Yet almost weekly you hear of advances on the green front, from baby steps to strides. Read more
Fashion is fickle — even, apparently, when it comes to hotels.
Consider the newly flagged Hilton New York/Fashion District. This fashion-themed high rise – so close to the Fashion Institute of Technology you can teeter over in mile-high Louboutins — opened officially April 5, 2010 as Fashion 26 — A Wyndham Hotel. Read more
For New York’s most style-obsessed hotels, Fashion Week is a gift. What better way to fill rooms during the dead of winter? W Hotels, a super-savvy marketer, goes a step further and embraces Fashion Week as an opportunity to fill rooms and strut its stuff. Read more
It’s the Top Ten list hotels dread. When Trip Advisor released its 2011 roster of the nation’s ten dirtiest hotels complete with reader-supplied pictures — Cockroaches! Black stuff in the showers! Holes on the bathroom floor! – one New York hotel scored a place of dishonor near the top. Read more
Invasion of the Body Snatchers aside, Pod is a cool name for a budget hotel. To my ears, it sounds upbeat and hip, because what could be more upbeat, or hip, than a place that proudly admits its rooms are small and cheap? Read more
As a fan of the Crosby Street Hotel’s Sunday Night Film Club (a club in name only) I perked up when I discovered the hotel’s stylish basement screening room – orange leather chairs, state of the art equipment – had launched a new series. Planned for four Mondays sprinkled throughout 2011, “Under the Influence: Writers on Film” pairs celluloid with lit, featuring a movie chosen by a prominent writer followed by a discussion with said writer and screenwriter Michael Maren. A reception with wine and nibbles wraps things up. Read more
It was just a matter of time. The Surrey, a small 1920s hotel, occupies a prime spot steps from Madison Avenue’s high-end boutiques, art galleries and the Whitney Museum of Art. For years it was a frowsy but dependable place where East Siders put up visiting relatives or moved in after a divorce if the nearby Carlyle proved too pricey. Read more
I love best hotel lists, so when Tripadvisor’s Travelers’ Choice awards for the top hotels of 2011 landed in our e-mail box today, I clicked on as fast as I could. Hmmm. Did you know the top hotel in the world is . . . the Golden Well (U Zlate Studne) in Prague, Czech Republic? Read more
It’s not exactly the comfort of strangers.
Green Eyes, a rarely seen one-act play by Tennessee Williams, dramatizes the nightmarish encounter of the Dunphys, a couple honeymooning in a New Orleans hotel room. Read more
Christmas 2010 is history, but the holidays roar on. And so does this season’s round of holiday drinks at around town, even if holiday libations at hotels are rare this year.
We found a trio of New York hotel bars that remain in a holiday mood. Read more