Author's product rating: 
| Advantages: |
The location is OK |
| Disadvantages: |
Unhelpful staff, poor customer service . No guarantee of a room even with booking |
| Recommend to potential buyers: |
no |
Reading other reviews online seemed to give the impression that the West Side Inn was a good place to stay if (and only if) the only thing you were looking for was a safe place to sleep. Make no mistake about it, this was the only thing I needed and so I booked a room for myself and my partner so we could travel the 3500 miles from the UK and see the sights of New York.
A not surprising amount of review space has been given to just how unorganized this hostel is. My own experience was one of booking a month in advance, emailing them immediately after booking to inform them that I would be arriving late (10pm), emailing them again a week before departure and again on the day of departure to remind them of my late arrival and still arriving at 10pm to find they had no rooms left at all.
That is not to say that alternative accomodation was not provided but after 11 hours of flying, trying to find the
hotel in an unfamiliar city and carrying two large suitcases I was expected to walk for 30 minutes, late at night and through uptown New York to find a hotel whose address they had scribbled onto the back of a business card. Further to this, when I finally arrived at the alternate hotel they had not received information regarding the room transfer. After booking and paying for a double room in a hostel 'steps away from' Central Park, we were given a cupboard of a room with bunk beds miles away from anything.
Needless to say the pictures of the hotel are not actually of the hotel and are extremely misleading. But this doesn't matter, because like hundreds of other reviewers I never got to stay there because after taking my booking they simply gave my room away despite sending them 3 emails in advance, none of which received a reply.
My advise to fellow travellers would be to book somewhere else if you want any kind of guarantee that you will have a room to sleep in when you arrive. I can only think myself lucky that one of the four
hotels the receptionist at the West Side phoned had a free room for the nights we were staying as I can't imagine any assistance would have been offered had this not been the case. No apologies were offered and the casual way we were told we would 'just have to stay somewhere else' combined with the number of travellers who have had similar experiences suggests this is regular occurance at the West Side Inn. Avoid.
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