If all you care about is the room and location, then this hotel is an acceptable choice. But for several hundred dollars a night - and the rate is in the $350 to $550 per night range - one deserves a much higher caliber of service and sophistication than this hotel can deliver. The biggest impediment to fine service here is poor training of the staff. Never have I seen such a sorry bunch of ill trained people in any business, hospitality or not. Enter the hotel and you see security guards and bell hops chit chatting among themselves instead of greeting the guests with the expected, "Hello, welcome to Helmsley." The reservation clerk keeps humming a tune while processing your reservation like some motel clerk in a fleabag motel. Missing is the cigarette dangling from his mouth or a wad of gum inside his mouth. He then callously tosses the room cards towards you instead of politely handing you the cards. In the restaurant, which by the way has an entire glass wall overlooking the lush green vista of Central Park, the maitre d' pours himself a glass of juice from the breakfast buffet and then proceeds to sip on it while calling out names of guests in the line and getting them seated. I have never seen a maitre d' or hostess even at a diner drinking anything while at the station. But this is pretty much the "atmosphere" of the place at all times. It seems they have hired a bunch of people and just pressed them into service without teaching them the basic rules of the hotel business. The room itself was spacious and properly decorated with period furniture, but again, the poor training of the staff was evident as there were no drink glasses in the room, only in the bathroom. Who would feel comfortable using bathroom glasses, unwrapped ones at that, for a drink in the room? As stated before, the location is fantastic but there are other hotels in this rate bracket that deliver a good location with much more ambience and style. This is not a hotel I will stay in even if they cut the price in half.
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