Okay, can someone please tell me why the hotels are in the $400.00 range in NYC for the weekend of December 12th? I have been to NYC four time this year and have paid on Average $250. per night and all of a sudden the rates are four hundred and something per night! Any idea why? Is it just because it's close o Christmas? Thank you for responses!

Rates in general seem to be through the roof this fall in general. There may be somethin special in NYC that weekend but this weekend there wasn't and prices were crazy. Places liek the Travel Inn and Hotel Pennsyvania that are usually just over $100 were up to $170 or $180. I tried bidding Priceline for both 1* and 2* for Thursday and Friday night - went as high as $90 for 1* and $95 for 2* in all zones and had no success.

I'm in NJ and have also been watching the rates- am looking for next Friday so we can stay and enjoy the night without watching train schedules. The rates are really high, it seems, but I can't think of anything going on. Of course I'm comparing to last fall and early spring when travel was still down. Perhaps it has picked up enough that the rates are going higher as well?

New York hotel room costs are notoriously high and have been for years. When the economy is good and tourism is up the occupancy rate soars, sometimes to capacity. I remember this one month in the mid 90's when complaints about NYC having no hotel rooms available hit the press. Hard to believe when you think of all the hotels we have here. There are more now. Discounts and deals usually happen only when there's an expected lull in room reservations, practically never between Thanksgiving and Christmas. New York hotels have the slow period schedule down to a science. Not to mention, hotels serve the business traveler as well as the vacationing tourist and both groups keep the schedule hopping, depending on what's going on throughout the city at any given time. Business travelers get the best deal with a corporate rate, unless a tourist comes at just the right time when a decent place offers a discount.

Tourism in NYC that hit an unprecedented slump after September 11th, is finally on the rebound. Supply and demand.

All those people who were too afraid to travel to NYC after the attacks are now returning.

Add to that, the fall and Holiday Season in NYC is the peak travel time for the city.

I just checked on expedia for that weekend. There were several decent hotels in the $200-250 range.

We made our first visit to NYC this summer and have noticed an amazing amount of people in the midwest traveling to the east coast, particularly NYC for vacation. Previous to 911, visiting NYC in particular was far down on the list for rural midwesterners, who in general "feared" big cities, lots of traffic and the general unknown. I think following such a tragedy has come some good for NYC, at least in the eyes of millions of Americans who never would have given NYC a chance.

I think tourist traffic will continue to be high for a few years as the "interest" has grown from a segment of the population that would never before considered visiting NYC.