Hotels mit Badewannen in Manhattan

I had booked a pre-paid non-refundable rate for this hotel 2 months in advance. I know this hotel gets busy on football/event weekends so I made sure to book as early as possible. When I arrived at 8:30pm to check in after 13 hours of travel, I was told that a pipe had burst “in the room I was assigned to” so I was out of luck and they had no other rooms available. I asked to see a picture of the room and it was completely under construction with the wood studs exposed. This clearly wasn’t a last-minute issue and there was no forewarning. Since I booked through *******, the hotel didn’t do anything to try to help. I spent 2 hours on the phone trying to find a new hotel room since the city was basically sold out by that point. I had to move to a hotel a few miles away which required driving to my meetings instead of making the short walk which was the whole point of staying at this hotel. I was not offered any help from the hotel staff. I tried to call the manager the next day and was sent to voicemail. I never received a return call, apology, or better explanation as to why I was the only room that couldn’t be fulfilled. Multiple people checked in after me & I had colleagues arrive the day after me and they received their rooms. It was a very shady experience with terrible customer service. Why book a hotel 2 months in advance on a pre-paid rate if you will then get booted from the hotel?!

The hotel is modern and new, with clean and comfortable rooms, and a convenient location adjacent to shopping, dining, a magnificent holiday lights display, and not too far from KSU. The pool and hot tub were plenty fine (and a delight to my two nephews and one niece staying in another room). The fitness center was spacious with good, well-maintained equipment. Normally, for these sort of ”cookie cutter” hotels, I'm happy to award 4 stars if they ”check all the boxes” (and 5 if they go ”above and beyond”). However, in a few areas, most notably the breakfast service, this hotel came up a tad short. I stayed two nights and had the complimentary breakfast on both mornings. I showed up for breakfast about 45 minutes after it opened (i.e., not 5 minutes before close), and experienced the following: (1) oatmeal almost empty one morning (I scraped the last bits out of it); totally empty the next morning (2) cinnamon rolls cold one morning; out the next morning (3) scrambled eggs down to a few unappetizing ”crumbs” one morning and the next morning were replaced by some pre-fab ”omelets” (both egg serving trays were allocated to ”omelets” that morning) (4) pancake machine out of batter one morning. HI Express's cinnamon rolls are an emblem of their brand; the breakfast area attendant should be monitoring them and replenishing when necessary. And it was not like it was especially busy; the breakfast area seats were perhaps 25-30% occupied. ALSO: they ran out of pool towels. And, it seemed like every time I walked past the front lobby, the front desk was unattended. I know desk attendants might need to leave the desk now and then, but it seems like a hotel should strive to keep the desk staffed except during the wee hours. I am fairly loyal to the HI Express brand. One reason for that loyalty is that its complimentary breakfasts are a cut above those of their competitors in the mid-tier lodging category; it's an area of differentiation in a category where differentiation is difficult to achieve. I would therefore suggest that all HI Express locations try to be diligent in keeping their breakfast experience positive. Yeah, once in a while, one item will run out or run low. But it should not be almost every warm item.