Great hotel, location, service. Huge Rooms.
I booked this hotel purely on location and recommendations from TripAdvisor (and of course price). It was a great choice overall. The location can't be beat: 2 blocks from Times Square where all the action is without the noise of the area, and just a minute walk from 5th Avenue. The staff are very friendly (took time to guide us through maps and spots to eat) and helpful. I initially booked a Deluxe Queen Room but even though it was about 30 square meters the layout was not great and felt small. Plus it was at the back of the hotel which offered no view at all except some old buildings. I upgraded immediately to an Executive King Room, where the layout was much better, almost 40 square meters in area and positioned at the front of the hotel with great views for only 35 Dollars a day more. Well worth it. The hotel is newly renovated, bathrooms are very clean, bed was a very comfortable queen size.
Although I am very happy with the hotel and I recommend it anyone, there were some issues with it:
- There is negligible closet space with just a couple of hangers. They were quick to bring us more hangers but with two people in the room it gets tricky trying to fit your clothes in that small space.
- They left only one small bottle of shampoo/body wash every day. For people like myself and my wife who like to take at least 2 showers each day, you quickly run out of the stuff.
- There is wi-fi offered in the room for a fee and works great. However, it's better to sign up with the front desk for it and get an access code instead of trying to do yourself over their web interface. Insist on getting your access code, so that you can hook up all your devices with a single daily subscription. Some of the staff seemed unaware of this, and informed me that I needed a separate daily subscription for each of my devices. This is not true, and to their credit you can connect more than one device per subscription. Just ask for your access code.
- The air-conditioning unit behind a panel on the wall was very noisy and we had to turn it off to be able to sleep.