You'll find a better option
We chose Bentley mainly because it’s just 7 blocks from the Central Park allowing a reasonable access to do morning jogs there at a more affordable price than hotels right south of the park.
Also, traveler pictures from room windows with the gorgeous bridge view were impressive. We, however, had a view of the opposing building from the 2nd floor, which was quite disappointing. It might be a good idea to specify which view the room has at the booking stage as it differs that much.
We appreciated their good, firm beds, but every other aspect of Bentley is definitely not four star which they claim to be.
First, their staff consists of naturally friendly individuals, but they haven’t been trained to provide the New York level of service – which admittedly is high. I’ll give a couple of examples. When we wanted to inform of dinner and Sunday brunch places, they didn’t really seem to have an idea of what to recommend to you. The places mentioned were close, yes, but quite disappointing in terms of quality or style. Once we were even given an address for a restaurant which simply wasn’t there. Another example would be the key card that expires, apparently, after five nights for security reasons. We were never informed of this although it would have been just a routine thing to do when you check in for more than five nights. We had even stopped at the front desk on the expiration day, but had to get all the way to our door to realise our key card didn’t work, get worried, and then get back to the front desk again to solve it.
Second, the front desk does get quite a central role as they don’t offer a free internet access (Hello: it’s 2012 – it’s not a valid option any more to charge for the internet access!) and you rely on the information from them a lot.
Third, the bathroom has some serious shortcomings. The shower in our bathroom (and in the neighbor’s bathroom as well…) made dreadfully loud noise. Additionally, it needed to be ran very hard in order to get any warm water, which felt very uncomfortable on your skin. There is no ventilation in the bathroom either, so every shower steamed the entire room.
Fourth, breakfast is not included. There is a tiny coffee shop in the lobby, but they only sell that watered American coffee, you can’t get your morning latte or cappuccino there.
Fifth, you wait for the elevators for ever. There are more of them, so the software must be working less than optimally to cause such waiting times.
So, the overall guest experience at Bentley gets, in my view, short in too many aspects. It may be a bit cheaper than other 4 star hotels, but you also get a lesser experience. This difference gets especially emphasised in New York where they really know how to serve you well practically everywhere. For all the more reason they should fix the service, internet and bathrooms at Bentley asap. Before they do – I recommend choosing a better option.