Look, when I rate this as good, I'm rating it as good by the standards of relatively upscale hotels in New York City. I would choose to stay here over most other hotels, but it also has some drawbacks that you should be aware of, and which mean that given the choice of the W or other similar upscale hotel, I would go there. We got a junior suite upgrade, which was appreciated, but felt somewhat off-put when they offered us a nicer suite if we would pay for an upgrade. We had two SPG Ambassador Platinum members in a room, which, should have qualified for best available room, so we kind of felt like they were fudging the SPG rules. In our room, there were a couple of glaring issues which the hotel failed to remedy. First, the bathroom sink barely drained, which the cleaning staff had to be aware of, but which was not fixed. Second, the Air Conditioning was not sufficient to actually cool the room - there was cold air coming out of both units but not in sufficient volume to make any difference, which was annoying, and adversely impacted my quality of sleep. Last, the bathrobe hanging in the bathroom had a big stain on it when we got there. I would really think that the cleaning staff would have noticed this and changed it out, but they never did. We left glasses from the bar in our room one night and the cleaning staff placed them outside our door the next morning, but they sat there for almost 24 hours before being collected even as other room service ware nearby was collected. The robe and glassware led me to conclude that the attention to detail that one might expect from such a hotel was somewhat lacking. One other thing to be aware of, especially for business travelers, is that this hotel has far too few elevators for the number of guests and during busy times the wait for the elevator is long (5+ min), elevator rides stop at every floor, and the elevators become uncomfortably packed full of people.
The lobby bar is really nice if a bit short on seating, and the restaurant has great breakfast, but make reservations in advance. The hotel has a private gym in the basement that SPG platinum gets free use of, and this is quite possibly one of the best hotel gyms I've ever used. It is a two story gym with lots of cardio equipment and a lot of machines and free weights with ample floor space. All in all, I'd happily stay there again, but didn't have such a great experience that I will go out of my way to do so, which many Meridien hotels have provided me.
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