Newest hotels in NYC: Crosby St, Ink 48, Surrey, Strand
Sometimes all the media hype goes to the almost-open hotels, but that doesn’t do you any good if you’re actually trying to book a room and want to avoid the reliable surprise that the opening date was more fiction than fact.
The Andaz Wall Street was the first high-profile opening on 2010. Here’s the rundown of the other big hotel openings for the past six months in NYC:
London-based Firmdale Hotels has ventured into New York with the boutique darling Crosby Street Hotel in SoHo. It has 86 rooms on 11 floors, as well as a 99-seat screening room. Its Crosby Bar, says the New York Times “so earnestly embodies a certain British quirkiness with its Paul Smith-meets-Moroccan décor and eclectic art.” Winter rates start at $475 a night, which includes English breakfast. The Crosby Street Hotel is located at 79 Crosby St., map.
Kimpton’s Ink 48, a 222-room, 17-story hotel housed in a former printing plant, is now fully open, with the “Heaven Over Hell’s Kitchen” penthouse suite is scheduled to open March 1. The lobby restaurant will open in February, the Spa will open in late March and a rooftop bar and glass-enclosed rooftop restaurant are also in contract, a hotel spokeswoman told NewYorkology. Originally, the hotel was going to be called Vu Hotel, which according to Hotel Chatter.com, explains the towels. Ink48 is located at 653 11th Ave., map.
The Andaz Wall Street officially opens for business today, offering boutique-style rooms from $220 as well as a Hudson Valley-sourced restaurant, a bar that emphasizes Pullman-style mixed-at-your-table cocktails and a spa that will let you order services in quick 15-minute increments for $35.
Without reeking of dollar signs, the David Rockwell-designed hotel evokes the neighborhood’s monied history in subtle ways: multi-sized bamboo panels in the lobby match the old lock boxes of Wall Street; arching woodcuts in the ceiling evoke watermark details from the dollar bill; and lamps in the restaurant resemble clusters of pearls (a la neighboring Pearl Street, originally named for the abundance of oyster shells left by Lenape Indians, according to “Naming New York”.)
The second-floor restaurant, Wall & Water, opens under the helm of Maximo Lopez who comes from the Park Hyatt Buenos Aires. Serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, the menu follows a “farm to table” concept drawing from relationships with Hudson Valley growers.
Bar Seven Five opens weekdays at 4 p.m. (when the market closes) and emphasizes Prohibition-style cocktails served in an open atmosphere meant to evoke a fancy living room rather than a bar.
The hotel rooms reach as high as the 17th floor (with condos on the upper floors.) As the hotel emerges from its soft opening, just over 50 rooms are open. All 253 rooms should be open soon, hotel spokeswoman Rachel Harrison told NewYorkology during a tour of the property last week.
W's catwalk package: Fashion Week tickets for 2010
W hotels has announced this season’s Fashion Week ticket offerings, including Bryant Park access to the likes of Nicole Miller, Carolina Herrera, Badgley Mischka and Custo Barcelona, all by way of the seasonal Catwalk Package.
For $899, you can get a pair of passes to one Mercedes Benz Fashion Week runway show, a backstage tour, and a suite at W hotel’s Union Square location. In addition, 10 percent of your VIP Catwalk package proceeds will benefit Dress for Success.
The schedule:
Feb. 11 - BCBG MaxAzria
Feb. 12 - Nicole Miller
Feb 13 - Lacoste
Feb. 14 - Hervé Léger by Max Azria
Feb. 14 - Custo Barcelona
Feb. 15 - Carolina Herrera
Feb. 15 - Tracy Reese
Feb. 16 - Badgley Mischka
Feb. 16 - Max Azria
Feb. 16 - TIBI
Feb 17 - Nanette Lepore
To book, call (917) 534-5902.
Technically, tickets to Fashion Week events are not for sale to the general public. The Catwalk Package is one of the few legitimate ways to buy your way into the tents. There’s also a charity auction for “Project Runway” finale tickets - but bidding on that pack of four tickets now stands at $3,100.
Valentines cupcakes at Ritz-Carlton weekends in Feb.
For the month of February, the Ritz-Carlton Central-Park will serve a tasteful indulgence: Valentine Cupcake Tea.
The flight of five mini-cupcakes will come with a choice of tea, hot chocolate or (for an extra $18,) a glass of Veuve Clicquot or Moet Imperial.
The Ritz-Carlton Valentines Cupcake Tea Menu:
Chocolate Truffle True Love
Decadent Chocolate Cake, Rich Valrhona Buttercream
Topped with a Hand Rolled Chocolate Truffle
Spice it Up Cinnamon
Moist Cinnamon Spice Cake, Freshly Whipped Vanilla Cream
Topped with Cinnamon Candies
Be Mine Cherry Almond
Fluffy Almond Cake, Cherry Preserves Filling, Amaretto Frosting
Topped with Slivered Almonds
Roses are Red Velvet
Rich Red Velvet Cupcake, Traditional Cream Cheese Frosting
Topped with Valentine Sprinkles and Chocolates
Passion Fruit
Tahitian Vanilla Bean Cupcake, Passion Fruit Filling,
Topped with Vanilla Cream and Lightly Toasted Coconut
The $28 cupcake tea will be available at the hotel’s Star Lounge every weekend in February from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with extra seating on Valentine’s Day. Reservations are required: (212) 521-6125.
The Ritz-Carlton is located at 50 Central Park South, map.
The all-you-can-eat chocolate and champagne Chocolate Bar served downtown in past years at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park will not happen in 2010, but may return in the future, according to Jennifer Oberstein, Area Director of Public Relations for Ritz-Carlton.
W's rock star deal: Moby, Norah Jones, Cheap Trick
W Hotels’ new Rock Star Package may lack a busted TV and I’m-with-the-band cachet, but it will get you tickets to see the likes of Moby, Cheap Trick, Norah Jones or Ben Harper and Relentless7.
The live performances will all be part of tapings for the TV show “Soundstage” at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. Tickets for the tapings are not available for sale; you need to get a room at W New York for access. Rock Star rates start at $269, which includes the “Spectacular Room” upgrade and a pair of tickets to any one of the tapings:
Cheap Trick – Jan. 26
Norah Jones – Jan. 27
Ben Harper and Relentless7 – Feb. 3
Moby – Feb. 5
Since “Soundstage” is sponsored b MasterCard, the hotel package must be booked using one of their cards. Also, the deadline to book is soon: Jan. 15.
In case you haven’t yet checked out the rooms at The Standard, Courtney Love has posted something of a video room tour. More precisely, she’s singing The Replacements’ “Unsatisfied” while prepping for her New Year’s Eve gig in the hotel’s penthouse-level Boom Boom Room.
The Standard is located in the Meatpacking District at 848 Washington St., map. It also has one of the best webcams in NYC.
About 45.25 million tourists visited New York City in 2009, a lower-then-expected decline of 3.9 percent from 2008, but still enough for the five boroughs to claim bragging rights as the most popular tourist destination in the United States for the first time since 1990, city officials announced Monday.
NYC’s 81,500 hotel rooms racked up a record total of 23.6 million room nights sold, about 300,000 more than a year earlier. Total Toursim spending added up to about $28 billion.
NYC also maintains its No. 1 spot with international tourists — 8.6 million visited in 2009 — and they tend to spend significantly more than domestic travelers.
“Last year, while tourism declined significantly in cities across the country, we fared far better than most. In fact, for the first time in 20 years, we were the most popular tourism destination in the country, surpassing Orlando, and our leisure and hospitality jobs rose – surpassing even their pre-recession levels,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Monday in announcing the numbers.
City officials forecast a 3.2 percent increase in tourism for 2010 — 46.7 million visitors - on the way to a goal of 50 million visitors annually by 2012.
Picture credits: Times Square and Liberty Island. Amy Langfield/NewYorkology.
Hotel renovations: Trump stays open; Milford closes
Although New York City hotels finally saw a rise of occupancy rates in December, nearly 2,000 rooms were taken off the market near the end of the year for renovations.
The hotel had been tackling renovations in stages and its building had been under scaffolding for over a year. The December closure resulted in 354 layoffs at the hotel, Crain’s reported.
That intersection won’t go hotel-less for long, as construction is progressing on the new InterContinental New York Times Square, set to open with 607 rooms this summer. (The hotel recently started tweeting updates, including the news that reservations are available starting Aug. 1.)
NYC hotel deals under $200 for December and January
While the worst of the recession may be in the past, rates for New York City hotel rooms aren’t yet on the rise. A wide range of properties are offering rooms under $200, even on peak holiday dates. A roundup:
To mark its 80th birthday — Jan. 2, 2010 — The New Yorker Hotel will offer rooms in January for $80 for the first night and a 20-percent discount on the second-night (with a two-night minimum.) To get the $80 rate, call the hotel at (800) 764-4680 and mention “80th birthday of the hotel.”
This week, the new Hotel Indigo in Chelsea has rooms from $199.
Tablet’s Last Minute Deals for NYC today include Gild Hall from $149, the Mansfield from $179, the Shoreham from $189 and even the semi-private Soho House from $245.
Quikbook’s NY sale offers rooms for this weekend including the Smyth for $176, Park South Hotel for $160, and the Hotel Reserve for $184.
