Hi All

My partner and I have always wanted to come to New York - been to the States but never made in there. We are hoping to have part of our honeymoon there. Any recommendations for a good place to stay? I am afraid we may be asking for too much!

We would like something in Manhattan, within easy reach of all the sights, but safe enough to walk around at night (or as safe as any city) and with restaurants etc nearby at night. We'd prefer it to have some sort of spa facilities or pool/gym and to be nice but not as expensive as the Plaza!! I guess a budget of up to $300 a night would be about as much as we could go to but cheaper would be better!

Glitterball, I'm not familiar with NY hotels with pools. That feature isn't common in NY. However, several have spas or gym facilities. I think your budget is quite reasonable. Start your search on www.quikbook.com. Choose the "spa resort" feature and you will find a list of NY hotels. You can also pick NY as a "destination" from the home page and see a map of Manhattan with hotels listed. For your criteria, I would pick a hotel in Midtown West - near theater, good restaurants, excellent subway access and its as safe as anywhere in NY. I think the Broadway area is one of the safest as there are lots of officers milling about at all hours. If you want a bit more residential - quiet - area, try midtown East or the Upper East or West Side. I have recently booked a stay at the new Blakely Hotel which sounds lovely. Have not had my stay yet, but will report back afterward. I like the Renaissance Times Square for convenience and the Michaelangelo is a beautiful hotel in the theater district.

Good luck and congratulations.

New York is 24/7 city - the safest large city in the US - and anyplace a tourist will hang out is just fine. (There are some less pleasant neighborhoods - mostly in the outer boroughs - the few remaining less pleasant neighborhoods in Manhattan are rapidly gentifying due to skyrocketing real estate prices).

You don;t say when you plan on coming - which can have a huge effect on prices. For most of the year $300 should get you a quite pleasant hotel - as long as you're not trying for November/December - when prices skyrocket.

Can't make specific recos - don;t know who has a spa - very few have pools - but if you come back with some options people will be happy to give insight.

Try the Parker Meridien! Great location, great indoor pool, gym, and spa. Not so sure about an outdoor pool though... Website is parkermeridien.com We really enjoyed our stay there last July, and got a rate under $300 for a junior suite.

Thanks so much for your tips. We are planning on visiting in May next year. It's really great to get tips from people who have been or know the area because all we get over here is the usual tourist nonsense!

Glitterball, you are so right. That's why dumpy hotels like The Milford Plaza are packed with tourists from the UK, who were sent there by the travel agents.

You may want to check out www.luxurylink.com, they have some nice auctions for NY hotels, 4 & 5*.

Thanks again
Yes it is amazing how often you see Milford Plaza - Virgin use them a lot, but won't be using them anyway as we went to Miami with them not so long ago and they sucked!

Any hotels to avoid at all costs?

tt

You might want to check out The Marriott Marquis in Times Square. There is quite a good gym at the hotel but no pool. You would be in the heart of the theater district.

The Millenium UN Plaza is another midtown hotel with a pool that's usually quite affordable. It's near the UN. One of the nicest hotels in midtown with I hear a good spa is the Ritz Carlton Central Park. But it doesn't have a pool. The 2 other midtown hotels I know with pools are the Peninsula (which is verrry expensive) and there's one in Times Square but can't remember which.

Some of the newer hotels downtown near the financial district and the WTC site have pools (I think the Ritz Carlton Battery Park and maybe the Marriott Financial Center) bu that area is not so convenient to midtown.

Hotels to avoid: the Pennsylvania one across from Madison Square Garden. (Sorry, can't recall the exact name.)

I just booked using quikbook for the first time and one big advantage with them is that they do not have any additional cancellation fee other than the hotel policy. So you can book something to be sure you have it, then if you find something better, you can cancel. As long as it's 2-3 days in advance it won't cost you anything.

Other services I've dealt with have a non-refundable fee of some sort, sometimes as much as one night's stay, even if you cancel way in advance.

I've read that the Carter and Park View hotels should be avoided.

This is my first post in ages; we literally just got back from a week at Parker Meridean, and I definitely recommend it. We didn't use the pool, much to my son's chagrin, but we saw plenty of people heading up to use it and also the spa called Gravity (I think). The hotel was very convenient for our family trip; I'll post a report this week. The junior suite was big enough for our family of four, and we felt like we were in the middle of everything, close to a subway stop for going downtown, lots of local choices in restaurants and near the park, Fifth Avenue shopping, Times Square, Moma, Columbus Circle etc. The concierge was great; the amenities fine; we all liked watching cartoons on a tv in the elevator. However, I don't want to paint this as a family resort. We were one of the few families there. In fact the look is very sleek and adult and contemporary and clean, with a white and orange and natural wood color scheme. We loved the television; it was basically the room partition in our suite and swung around in its case so you could watch from the sofa or in the bed. We had to switch rooms to get one with a bathtub for bathing the little ones; the first was much cooler, all concrete and stone. Can't help with the cost; this was part of a corporate rate. But it was a bigger room at a cheaper rate than any place else we checked.

I will be in NYC in Sept and plan on staying in the Library Hotel in Midtown.

(I saw on the Travel Channel eons ago with Samantha Brown).

Anyone have any specific feedaback on it? I am a huge bookworm and it is part of the destination for me.

I Googled "NYC hotel spa pool" and came up with the following:

http://www.hotelgansevoort.com - has a rooftop pool and spa

Here's a listing from the NY Times of four hotels that have spas and pools:
http://tinyurl.com/4ccw3

Don't know about prices, sorry.

My husband stayed at Hotel Gansevoort early this past winter, and we saw it when going to Pastis. It's pretty cool, and the pool was just featured on the new Bachelor (sorry, I'm such a loser I watch these things and notice). However, it may be removed from a lot of sights/attractions for a tourist. My husband was on biz and he liked the area/scene a lot.

Fifa, I've never stayed at the Library Hotel, but I did read a good review of it in a newspaper article talking about interesting hotels in NY. Let us know what you think, it sounds like a very interesting place.

The Gansevoort is a very cool idea if you're into young, hip, trendy. It's in the meatpacking district which is on the edge of the village.

Rooms at the Gansevoort will be over $500. I too suggest the Parker Meridien. We recently had some clients staying there and I had a look at the rooms -- very nice! Nice hotel with nice facilities.