The Roosevelt Hotel, New York City

...has to be one of the hardest reviews of a hotel I have written. Why? Because normally I end up in a marvellous hotel with superb facilities and staff or a true dump of a place with mouldy bathrooms and no service at all. I do not like giving 3 stars with reviews as it doesn't really give a good indication as to whether the hotel is good or bad, but in this case I am forced too. There were no major problems with this hotel, nothing to make me recommended ...
...I used expeida.co.uk to get the best deal I could find on this hotel. Although Expedia often provide great flight and hotel packages, it can be difficult to establish how much you actually paid for each part of the trip.

In this case, there were three adults travelling together from London Heathrow to JFK in New York with American Airlines. The stay was for four nights, room only at The Roosevelt Hotel in early June 2006. As a package, ... more

This has to be one of the hardest reviews of a hotel I have written. Why? Because normally I end up in a marvellous hotel with superb facilities and staff or a true dump of a place with mouldy bathrooms and no service at all. I do not like giving 3 stars with reviews as it doesn't really give a good indication as to whether the hotel is good or bad, but in this case I am forced too. There were no major problems with this hotel, nothing to make me recommended people avoid it. However, at the same time, there is nothing that would definitely attract any repeat business from me.

Booking & Pricing

As with most flight and hotel trips that I book, I used expeida.co.uk to get the best deal I could find on this hotel. Although Expedia often provide great flight and hotel packages, it can be difficult to establish how much you actually paid for each part of the trip.

In this case, there were three adults travelling together from London Heathrow to JFK in New York with American Airlines. The stay was for four nights, room only at The Roosevelt Hotel in early June 2006. As a package, we paid £480 per person for this trip. On a nightly basis, this probably works out around £120 per room (flights just over £300 per person). As has always been the case with Expedia, booking was very easy and no problems at all with our reservations. The hotel does have it's own website which can be used for reservations, but I would suggest if you need a flight as well, try and book these at the same time as you often get a discount. As a package price, we believe that this represents relatively good value for money. Choosing a hotel in New York can be difficult, but my advice is always to strike a balance between price and location, and this is where this hotel comes up trumps.

Location

Many hotels in New York call themselves midtown hotels. This can be quite misleading as midtown; under any definition can cover a vast area of Manhattan. I would class The Roosevelt Hotel as a true midtown hotel, and the most appealing part of the hotel is definitely its location.

No matter where I stay in Manhattan, I always make sure that I'm close to a Subway station - it's cheap, easy to use and will get you anywhere in New York. The Roosevelt is 1 minute walk (stretching to 2 minutes if you have to wait for the traffic) to Grand Central Station - from here you can get to anywhere in New York. Even cheaper than the Subway, and also a much better way to experience New York is walking. From the hotel, you are about 15 minutes walk to Times Square, 20 minute to Central Park and 20 minutes to the Empire State Building. You cannot get much more midtown then that!

Arriving

If you are in New York for pleasure, you've got to make the most of every second, and the trip to and from the airport is easiest done in a taxi or private transfer. Direct service to your hotel door and about the same cost as a bus per person if there are three or four of you. Getting a taxi form JFK is easy and the porters are always waiting outside to hotel to welcome you.

We arrived at the hotel around 12:45 in the afternoon. Check in isn't officially until 3pm but there was not problem checking in immediately. One thing you will realise if you stay here for a couple of nights is that the hotel is very large, and as a result can get very, very busy. We must have been lucky as we walked straight to the front desk. Other times, we had seen nightmare style queues of guests arriving.

The entrance hall to the hotel is very grand. It is almost like stepping back in time. As you enter up the stairs, the concierge desk is facing you on your left, the porters have a station to your right and the front desk is located opposite the lifts a little further back. If you are going to be meeting people at your hotel, the lobby provides a great setting for drinks, coffee or just a general chat. The atmosphere in the lobby is very calm, a stark contrast to the buzz of the Big Apple.

Again, we must have just timed in right, but there was a lift waiting for us to take us to our room on the 4th floor.

The Room

Like most large hotels (this one has around 1000 rooms!), the corridors can be very long, repetitive and boring. The hotel has attempted to continue the grandeur of the lobby in other public areas; however, the corridors seem to look dated rather than grand. Take note of the signs directing you to the relevant room numbers as the corridors are long, and one mistake could send you miles off course!

Upon entering our room, a somewhat familiar smell was prominent. It wasn't a clean, fresh smell, nor was it of stale or mouldy bathrooms. The smell was of general Manhattan - all of the noise, the hustle, the traffic and people - the obvious lack of any fresh air in the busy streets of New York seemed to continue into the room. This is not necessarily a bad smell, and is definitely not cause for any complaints, but you did feel as if you couldn't escape to anywhere tranquil.

Our room looked down onto 45th Street, with views towards Grand Central, and if you looked up - the MetLife building. The lights in the room where already switched on when we entered, and due to the lack of any significant day light, these remained on whenever we were in the room, day or night.

The room was not large, nor was it particularly cramped. There were two double beds in the room with a decent amount of space between and around them. What looked like a freestanding wardrobe hid the TV at the foot of the beds, and towards the window were a desk and chair with telephone and all the usual hotel information. Once we had unpacked our cases, they were left next to the TV cabinet, which meant they were never in the way, nor made the room any smaller.

As you entered the room, the bathroom was to your right. It was small - but there was enough room to meet your needs - and I still haven't stayed in a city centre hotel with a big bathroom. The bathroom was clean, and although the tiles did look dated, they and the rest of the bathroom were in good condition. The bath did have a shower curtain which are always a questionable piece in any bathroom (would much prefer a small screen), but although it certainly was not new, it didn't have too many signs of over use.

The shower was reasonably powerful. We were only on the 4th floor, and so I cannot say if this is the case on the higher floors (18 altogether). One thing to remember if you are staying at this hotel is that when we turned on the shower, we moved the lever to point towards the red arrow on the tap, however the water remained cold - freezing in fact! It was a small bit of intuition on our part that led us to fix the problem - the sign had been attached the wrong way - the more you moved the lever towards the blue section, the hotter the water became! I'm sure the hotel has numerous complaints about no hot water, but just try the cold section first before calling reception!

We never use hotel toiletries, but the usual soap, shower gel, hand cream and mouth wash were provided. The downside to this otherwise acceptable bathroom was the ventilation - or lack of it. It wasn't until early one morning (about 3am) when I had to use the bathroom that I noticed that a small fan in the ceiling started when you switched on the light. The general buzz of New York had been too much to hear it previously. To be fair, it was hardly worth it being their. This meant that the bathroom steamed up very easily when taking a shower. My solution was to leave the door very slightly ajar - but you still felt like you were in a steam room by the time you had finished.

The beds provided were adequate for the three adults we had in our room. I would imagine that this room is used to house four guests, at which point it would become a little crowded, but it was fine for us. The beds were not the most comfortable of hotel beds I've slept in, but again, they were standard - nothing spectacular, nothing diabolical. The sheets seemed fresh every day and both beds were fully made up by housekeeping every day of our stay. An extra set of pillows were provided, which we always utilise, and I'm sure there would have been no problem in obtaining more if the need arose.

Wardrobe space in the room was limited, in fact, almost non existent. A small cupboard, on your left as you entered, opened up to provide a small rail which ran from front to back, rather than side to side. The hangers provided were also limited, but they were "proper" hangers - not the ones you have the clip on to a ring which is fixed to the rail. Drawer space was provided in the cabinet that housed the TV. The room could easily have housed another of these wardrobe come TV cabinets to provide extra space for more clothes.

If this room had a little more natural light, more wardrobe space and had more of a fresh feel to it, which could easily be achieved without loosing the attempted grand feeling, I would have been relatively impressed. However I'm sure that these small improvements would bump up the price quite significantly.

Service & Facilities

Every member of staff we encountered at this hotel was professional and friendly. But like the rest of the hotel, nobody did anything I would class as exceptional. They did what was required to make you feel welcome, but nothing to make you feel special.

Arriving at the hotel we were met by a friendly porter with an umbrella, the woman who checked us in smiled and handed us our keys, the housekeeping staff always said "good morning" etc, and the porters were always available and willing to help with luggage.

One member of staff who did excel was a female concierge. We had tickets to see the Yankees vs. The Red Sox during our stay, however the weather during the day was torrential rain. We asked the woman if she knew if the game would still be played. Whilst waiting for the internet site to load up, she began telling us a little about the rivalry between the two teams - she must have been able to tell we didn't know a lot about baseball and were just going for the experience. At the time, the game was still on, but she took our room number and said she would let us know if anything changed. Shortly after, as we were getting ready in our room, we heard on the TV that the game had been cancelled. Not too long after the woman from the concierge desk called to let us know. Unfortunately I cannot remember her name, but she was the only female I saw working on the concierge desk and I would recommended speaking to her if you need anything!

We did not use the hotel for much more than sleeping. The hotel does provide a fitness suite but there was never enough time to use it. The restaurant just off from the main lobby always looked busy, but we like variety and so never ate here. As with most hotel restaurants and bars, prices tend to be higher than what you would pay elsewhere. We did sit in the bar just before we left and the staff here were also friendly and came to our table to offer us drinks.

I cannot write this review without mentioning the lifts at this hotel - they are dreadful! Opposite the front desk is the wall of lifts - six in total. All of them cover all floors. Going up isn't generally a problem, but if you're on a lower floor, getting in a lift to go down, particularly with luggage can be a long process. At one point, five of the six lifts were all at one of the top five floors, and so by the time they reached the lower numbers, after stopping at almost every floor, there was no chance you could squeeze in.

When we were leaving, after the third lift was full, we finally called a lift to go up, rather than down. It was empty, so we got in, but we did have to go to the 15th floor before starting our journey downwards! I'm sure without too much of an upgrade, each lift could be programmed to cover just 3 floors each. For some people who want to go between floors, this may mean they have to go down to the lobby first, but for the vast majority of people, this would definitely save a lot of time as the lifts would only be used by a limited amount of people.

Overall

As I stated at the beginning of this review, this hotel did nothing to make me want to stay here again, but also there is nothing to make me stay away.

I think the ultimate recommendation of a hotel is whether you would stay here again. In this case, I cannot see any reason not too. However, I would certainly look around first to see what else was on offer before booking.

The hotel lobby is very grand, and although the same theme is attempted throughout the rest of the hotel, I can understand it can be difficult over 18 floors and 1000 rooms. The more upmarket hotels I'm sure will achieve this, but in the case of The Roosevelt, it is certainly lost by the time you exit the lifts.

The major plus point of this hotel is its location. Located anywhere else in Manhattan, I'm sure this hotel would not be very busy, but the fact that you can walk to many of the major tourist and business destinations, and are only seconds from Grand Central does make this hotel very appealing to a wide range of guests.
 

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