Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
location, clean, friendly staff |
| Disadvantages: |
noise, elevators, sinks, toilet paper, quilts |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
♦ Finding a hotel in New York City ♦
Trying to find a hotel in New York City is never an easy undertaking. There are so many different places to choose from, but there are also so many opportunities to go dreadfully wrong with your choice, especially when you cannot afford the four or five star establishments.
When picking my hotel, a number of things were important to me. First of all, location. I prefer to be centrally located, somewhere between 30th and 50th Street, not too far on the West Side. Secondly, cleanlyness. I once had a dreadfully horrific experience with a budget
hotel in New York which was so unhygienic that I can probably blame it for a series of health problems that arose shortly after the trip. And thirdly, noise level. Do not deceive yourself, New York City is very very noisy. And most
hotels are far from soundproof.
I chose the Comfort Inn Manhattan after extensive research. I think the deciding factor for me was that this hotel had received the so-called “Gold Award” for five years in a row. So Did it deserve this prestgious award?
♦ Location ♦
You could not wish for a better location than the Comfort Inn Manhattan. Located between 5th and 6th Avenue on 35th Street, you are within a walking distance of Macy’s, the wealth of stores on 34th Street and 5th Avenue, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Penn Station, Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, St Patrick’s Cathedral and Times Square – to name just a few worthy places to visit.
We arrived in New York City at night and decided to walk from the airport bus stop at Grand Central Station to the hotel. I know Manhattan like my back-pocket, so I was very surprised when we started walking down 35th Street and could not find the hotel between 5th and 6th Avenue. Once we reached Broadway, I decided to turn around again to have another look. Slowly walking back I noticed a tiny sign labelled “Comfort Inn”. It was hardly visible from the street, as it had no lights!
This part of 35th Street would probably look rather dodgy to first-time visitors. While it does offer a lot of bars and restaurants, it looks dirty and run-down. At night, you will see massive piles of bin-bags lining the side-walks, a side-effect of having so many establishments in one street.
♦ Arrival ♦
Neither the entrance nor the lobby are anything spectacular, but what do you expect from budget accommodation? At the very least it was clean and cozy, offering free tea and coffee to all its guests and couches to relax on.
Reception was not staffed when we arrived and there was no bell to ring to draw the receptionist’s attention to you. So we had to wait for a few minutes. When she finally arrived, she was not very chatty. She took down my details, informed me that the room had been prepaid (but that she needed to take an imprint of my card) and then handed me one key card to a room on the 6th floor. She pointed us towards the elevator and we were on our way.
Or so we thought. When we arrived at the two elevators, we saw a sign that one of them was currently undergoing reparations “in order to serve our guests better in the future”. As a gesture of apology management devised this little candy basket (“to sweeten your wait”) conveniently placed next to the elevator. As we were soon to discover, this basket was filled up on a daily basis with all sorts of goodies, some really yummy and some rather revolting.
We arrived on the 6th floor and made our way to our room. The corridors were rather run-down and in dire need of a lick of paint. The carpet needs replacing. In front of our room there was a huge white stain, probably caused by bleach spillage at some stage or the other. Needless to say, my heart sunk at this stage. What were we to expect from out room?
♦ The room ♦
On opening the door, I instantly breathed a sigh of relief. The interior of the room was nothing like the corridor. Immediately to my right was the bathroom. And straight ahead of me opened a small, but clean-looking bedroom. To the right was the bed, covered in a flowery quilt with some flowery pillows. To my left was a sideboard with New York and hotel information and a gigantic TV. Straight ahead of me was a round table and two chairs. A built-in closet was equipped with a mini-safe and an iron.
But I was not very happy with the window situation. Looking straight ahead all there were some dodgy and dented blinds covered with net curtains – no lovely flower-pattern curtains that I had seen advertised in pictures of the hotel. I could see lights come in from across the street. Being someone who needs it very dark to sleep, a slight disappointment set in. I my head I was thinking about requesting another room. (I never did request it, as I hate confrontation.)
The queen-sized bed looked inviting, but when sitting down on the bed, I immediately noticed that the quilt and pillows had a sweet stench to them – obviously they had not been cleaned in a while. We removed them right away – to reveal a dark green felt blanket and a white sheet. Sitting down on the bed I found it was comfortable enough, although the mattress was not as hard as I would have liked it to be.
♦ The bathroom ♦
A first inspection of the bathroom made me happier – it looked very clean. The towels, however, shocked a little. They were far from white – but had a real grey colour to them, obviously from frequent usage. In subsequent days, however, the quality of towels supplied did get better – and turned from grey into a sort of apricot colour. The bathtub looked fine, though it was very low and short (typical for budget New York hotels). I took a couple of baths in it, which were slightly uncomfortable, but pleasant enough.
The sink was probably the biggest nuisance of all. Not only was it tiny, it was very inconveniently placed. Just above the sink was a slanted glass shelf intended for toiletries, which meant that you were unable to lean over the sink when brushing your teeth, washing your face or shaving. The glass shelf in itself was a waste of space, though, because the slant made everything fall to the floor. On the first day it led to my toothbrush falling behind the toilet and onto the floor – which meant that I needed to go out and purchase a new one.
A hairdryer could be found attached to the wall. It was not very powerful, but did the job. There were not many free toiletries provided. There was a bottle of shampoo and a couple of bars of soap, though a sign in the bathroom did invite guests to call the front desk if anything else was needed.
♦ Housekeeping service ♦
Housekeeping service starts work from 8 a.m. onwards. If you do not wish to be disturbed this early, you must place the “Do not disturb” sign outside the door. If the sign is not removed by 2 p.m., the maid service will assume that you do not want your room cleaned that day.
I found the housekeeping service to be quite good. They hovered and cleaned the bathrooms nicely. They replaced the towels on a daily basis. But they never seemed to replace the bedsheets during our 9-day-stay. This was noticeable only because our top green bedsheet had a noticeable hole in it. At first we did not notice that the sheet had not been changed, because the hole appeared to have disappeared. However, on closer inspection we noticed that housekeeping merely rotated the blanket so that the hole was moved on a daily basis.
Toilet paper became an issue more than once – there never seemed to be enough of it. We once had to request additional paper at the front desk.
♦ Other staff ♦
Apart from the woman who checked us in on the first night, the staff was very impressive indeed. From front desk and maintenance men to housekeeping – everyone always said ‘hello’ and started chit-chat with a smile. They certainly made our stay a pleasant one.
♦ Breakfast ♦
The hotel does have a restaurant (Brendan’s) but I am not sure whether it is just a restaurant next door or if it is truly part of the hotel. We never had lunch or dinner there, but I can tell you that the menu promises typical Western-type food, such as steaks and burgers.
Complimentary continental breakfast was served here every morning – until 10 a.m. on weekdays and 11 a.m. on weekends. This basically is a buffet-style self-service breakfast with no thrills attached. You could choose from bran flakes, cornflakes, oatmeal in bags, donuts, toast and bagels. There was apple and grape jelly to put on your bagels and toast. If you got there early enough, you were able to grab an apple or orange – but most days we were either left with the dodgy last ones or none at all. There are orange juice, apple juice, tea and coffee to drink.
My fiancé and I truly did not enjoy the breakfast – it was rather bland. We ate here 4 out of 9 days and went to diners the rest of the time. The breakfast hall was also rather messy, with the staff neglecting to change/wipe down tablecloths inbetween breakfast guests.
♦ Other facilities and services ♦
The Comfort Inn Manhattan does not offer any other facilities. It does not have a gym sauna or swimming pool. It does not offer room service, but provides menus of local food establishments from which you can order take away food.
♦ Departure ♦
When we checked out on our final day, I was surprised to find that I still needed to pay a extra mandatory charge of $1.08 per day for the in-room safe. You have to pay this, whether or not you actually use the thing. To be fair, this charge is advertised on their website, but I do not think I was told about it when booking with Expedia.
Otherwise check-out was swift and to my amazement we were offered luggage storage until we had to go to the airport straight away. In most hotels you actually have to ask for this. We were given a number and were on our way.
When we returned to the hotel later that afternoon, the luggage was returned to us safely. It was then that my fiancé pointed out something on the wall to me. There was a huge poster indicating that the Comfort Inn had won the Gold Award in 1999,2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003.
“What happened to 2004?” he asked.
♦ The verdict ♦
I know that this review probably has been quite critical of the hotel, but do not take it wrong: I do not think this was a bad hotel. In fact, it started growing on me over the days – to the extent that I did not want to leave on the last day.
The first night, I had real troubles sleeping. Despite having requested a ‘quiet’ room, this room was rather noisy. You could hear the voices of people echoing from the street. You could hear the garbage trucks in the early morning hours. After the first night, I got used to it, though.
The light from across the street did not cause me as much trouble sleeping as I thought it would. But the room temperatures would occasionally get to me. It was often very cold when trying to fall asleep – and the flimsy bed sheets provided little protection against the harsh winter temperatures of New York. The heating was not too bad, but it seemed as if it was turned off sporadically.
The defective elevators were not as much of a nuisance as I had anticipated. Occasionally we did walk the stairs to the 6th floor, but usually we did not have to wait more than 5 minutes for the elevator to appear. It only was real bad during the early morning hours and check-in time. It would be unfair to reduce the rating because of the elevators, as this is truly only a temporary state of affairs.
Despite the nuisances, the Comfort Inn Manhattan is a cut above the other budget hotels in New York. I only have stayed in one better one to date. It is ideally located, it is clean and the staff is very friendly. And with a whole city to explore – what else do you really need? Yes, sometimes we all would like to stay in a place that is luxurious and a level above our own homes. But if you just need a place to rest for the night and store your luggage, the Comfort Inn Manhattan is truly a “Home away from Home”.
♦ Prices ♦
We paid an average of £70 per night. Prices will vary depending on the time of year you are visiting New York
♦ Further information ♦
42 W 35th Street
New York, NY 10001
Tel: 001-212-947-0200
Fax: 001-212-594-3047
Reservations: 1-800-228-5150
www.comfortinnmanhattan.com
Check-in time: 3:00 p.m.
Check-out time: 12 p.m.
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