Hotel Pennsylvania, New York City > Reviews > Hotel Pennsylvania

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Cheap, fantastic foyer
Disadvantages:	Dirty, small rooms

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

The original telephone number for this hotel is 65000, so, for Glenn Miller fans, this has to be worth a visit, but I cannot recommend staying there.

The location of this two-star hotel is excellent, being in the garment district, where the major designers used to have their establishments, right opposite Penn Station and Madison Square Gardens, over the street from Macy's, and less than two blocks from the Empire State Building.

The huge foyer is clean and decked out in marble, with Glenn Miller playing all the time, and the queue for the desk is usually very long, but the efficient staff deal with it very quickly. There are food outlets in the foyer, but they are not cheap. The eight lifts get you quickly to your floor. I was impressed by the cleanliness, considering the number of people in the foyer.

I suppose that, if we had had a room which was clean, we may have stayed there for the whole week, but we moved out after one night. We got a full refund without a problem. The small "double" room we were allocated had blood stains on the walls and loose and exposed electrical wiring. The windows were so filthy that we had to open them to look out, and the window coverings (I cannot, in all honesty, call them curtains) were grubby and insect covered. This was in February.

The shower was not clean and needed refurbishment, the door did not close properly, so could not be locked.

We contacted our travel agent, who sent us to the Helmsley Midtowne Hotel, which was slightly more expensive, had one half more stars, but was far better value for money.