Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
Clean, Fab location |
| Disadvantages: |
Leaky Tap and Noisy lifts |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
yes |
When looking for a hotel in New York this time around, I had a few more factors to consider compared to last time, as I was taking my mum I wanted to make sure that she was in a good location next to the shops and would be able to find her way around easy enough.
I was trying to book the Helmsley which was a fantastic hotel in a fantastic location but like many of the hotels I had already tried most of the availability had already gone, so my colleague suggested staying at the Hotel Thirty Thirty after looking at the hotel and its location I thought it would be perfect and the
price also seemed pretty reasonable considering that we were going the first week in December and most of the population were travelling in that direction to complete some Christmas shopping.
When I looked at the hotels website it claims to be "The best Address in all of Manhattan, New York." So let's see if that is true……
The Location:-
30 East, 30th Street New York, this is a superb location close to Macy's and The Empire state building which is about 3 blocks away it is literally a 10 minute walk, previously I stayed on times square and that was good if you wanted to go out more at night this location is ideal for visitors wanting to see the sites more than anything which was what we were planning to do first time around but couldn't fit it in the short space of time that we had.
Getting from the Airport was a bit of a mess because I had not looked into getting a taxi after midnight and this makes it ideal for taxis to pounce on you just like one particular gentleman did, we thought he was taking us to the shuttle bus that takes you to hotels but we soon realised that when we got out at the parking lot that we were about to pay for a limo, as there was 4 of us there was alot of baggage to get in a small yellow taxi and alhough at the time we did not realise this they would not only charge you for working after midnight, but also for the extra bags and the toll charges, so when the limo driver said he would do it for $65.00 which was approximately £43.00 we decided to go ahead and go with it there was plenty of room and all the bags fit snugly in the boot or "trunk" as they call it.
The journey was from Newark Airport and took approximately 30 minutes so this was not a bad price for a limo between 4 even though it had caused some major arguement up on the parking lot. If you are arriving in the day time and you are pretty confident at finding your way around then use the Airtrain it is cheap and fast from Newark direct into central Manhattan.
When the driver announced that we had arrived at the hotel, I looked out the window and immediately thought that the hotel would be basic and tiny as there was a small entrance to the hotel that looked a little shabby.
On opening the doors there were 8 steps up to another set of double doors which then led onto the lobby and reception area, we struggled to carry our bags up the stairs as we had 2 bags each but to the far right next to the stairs was a wheelchair lift which could of been used to lift the bags should it have been more difficult.
Once we proceeded through the second lot of doors the reception area was located directly to the right and as we had arrived close to 1am there was only one member of staff manning the reception area so no problems with queuing for check-in.
I had booked through a
travel trade site so had to present a form of ID and also the accommodation voucher which stated that 2 twin rooms had been paid for.
The repctionist quickly checked out names on the room list and asked for my credit card to take an imprint for any charges that may apply once we have left the hotel, this is standard procedure in almost any hotel now and nothing is charged to the car unless there are any damages or unpaid charges.
I was then presented with the personal information such as home address and name which I was asked to sign and we were then presented with our key cards.
In the lobby were 3 lifts to take you up to your room these are operated in the normal fashion with one button for up and one for down, the lift rings once it arrives at your floor and once inside the floors are listed to take you to your room, we were in rooms 725 and 726 so we required floor 7 the lift moved fairly fast as sometimes you can get in a lift and they take forever to actually get to your floor, once we arrived my mum's room was directly opposite the lift and our room was next to the lifts on the left.
The Rooms:-
Each room had the same set up standard twin room. You entered the room by swiping the key card down with the arrow facing you, this made the light on the door turn green to show you that the door was open.
On entry into the rooms my first impression was that it was narrow the beds literally took up all of the space in the room making the width approximately 7.5ft and the length approximately 12ft so it felt just like being in a bedroom! To the right of the door was a narrow double wardrobe that contained a safe inside that could be programmed with any code for you to store your valuables this was a free service. The wardrobe contained 8 hangers and there were 2 deep drawers within the wardrobe ideal for storage as I literally emptied my whole case into one of them.
The beds were comfortable and had clean white sheets on with a fleecy brown blanket and a padded quilt on top.
The decor in both rooms was identical with brown carpet and cream walls which made the rooms appear modern.
We had a full lenghth mirror on the rear of our door to the room and a bedside table between the twin beds which had a clock radio on and a bedside lamp, telephone and underneath was the New York version of the yellow pages and two guide books for New York which were hardback to be left in the room.
A large 21" television screen was mounted on the wall over my friends bed but was in an ideal location as we could both view from our beds if we wanted to watch any television.
The bathroom was located to the left of the room and had a bath with overhead shower complete with a towel set each consisting of a face flannel, hand towel and a bath sheet although they were in the worst colour possible for me which was white and I always manage to stain them with mascara and orange coloured foundation!!
The toilet came with two kleenex toilet rolls and the sink had a large mirror directly above the sink with a lighting unit above it and another light directly over the bath.
Complimentary toiletries were also in the bathroom with shampoo, conditioner, soap and body cream they certainly came in handy when I ran out!
The bathroom was decorated in cream and gold with marbled tiles from floor to ceiling which at times was pretty cold when you went in there as there were no radiators to heat the room, so this meant I could have lots of nice hot baths after a day out in the city.
So far I could not fault the hotel it was clean and the maid service was carried out daily and they were constantly cleaning and hoovering the rooms to keep the cleanliness in place. If you did not require the made service however you could place a "Do not Disturb" sign to the handle of your door and the maids would not enter your room, on one occassion however we had constantly left the sign on the door and whilst we were out they came in just to change our towels as we had ben there for 3 days without any clean towels so I thought that was extremely good of them.
The Lobby:-
Located in the lobby are 3 pay phones accepting 5c, 10c and 25c coins only and 75c is required for a 3 minute international call.
Access to the internet is available using your credit card and there are two systems available but not very good for privacy as you can view each others monitors.
If you want any tourist information this is all located in the lobby also, have a good look through as you will come across maps of Manhattan as well as discount coupons.
Near to the entrance is a souvenir tour shop too which sells you your "I Love NY" T-shirts as well as mugs, pens, sweatshirts, teddies you name it they have it in there.
The Eateries:-
Zana's Lounge, Bar and Dining Room, although we did not make use of the hotel recommended restaurant we did venture in for cocktails at at $9.00 a cocktail approx £5.00 it was well worth the money they were not your standard cocktails that you could find absolutely anywhere they were a slight twist on the originals and they had me wanting more more more, but it was late at night and there was only one person behind the bar making drinks for the whole restaurant and I have never been one for waiting!
Check-out:-
We needed to catch our 8.30am flight which meant we would be checking out at 5.15am, the receptionist very kindly advised us that if we didnt have a car booked then they could do that for us and it would cost $70.00 again we thought this would be fine as nothing had cost us a great deal of money throughout the holiday, the taxi arrived on time and was a large 4x4 with leather seats and had enough capacity for 6 passengers and the boot had plenty of room for our cases, it is customary to provide a 14-20% tip which we made sure that we did as this was by far the smoothest transfer ever.
If I do go again in the near future I will be sure to book the transfer in both directions to make my stay less stressful that it was this time!
Overall the location of this hotel could not be faulted and with the high standard of cleanliness this hotel is ideal for those wanting to be in the centre of the city and not pay a fortune for it, we paid £265.00 each for 5 nights at this hotel and I would pay it all over again as the closest subway was two blocks away on 28th street and with a day pass for just $7.00 approx £4-5.00 this made it even easier to get around Manhattan.
The hotel has its own website which you can make a reservation on or you can book them with any travel agent.
