3 stays in a Club Room--mixed feelings for a convention style factory hotel

1   Not Recommended
Room 4922 , Club King Room
May 17, 2017 by EXPERT

 Map | 2 Reviews | 50% Recommended
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Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel
 Map | 2 Reviews | 50% Recommended

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Room 4922

Club King Room

Liked:
Location
Service
Food
Amenities
Room
Stats
Room
Club King Room

I had business in New York with several of my client groups, and room rate and SPG affiliation made me choose the Sheraton Times Square for the first time. I had 3 different stays at the hotel in March and April 2017.

This hotel is a monster. A massive convention style factory of a hotel. 

Check In

Check in surprisingly didn't take too long for any of my 3 stays--though the first stay had problems. They took a little time to sort it quickly, and then that was that. 

Considering how big the hotel is, the SPG Platinum line really helps with check in and check out. Otherwise, I might have had to kill myself. 

This is when you also discover the crazy elevators: the ones that require you to input the floor you want, telling you which elevator to use. It's annoying, it gets crowded easily, and it's frenetic pushing through people who still are trying to figure it out. I hated them, my clients hated them, and other guests we met hated them. 

Room

My rooms were always...fine. Nothing too nice. Nothing too impressive at all. Nothing that made me think I was being upgraded at all by the hotel, either--despite being SPG Platinum 100 nights, and despite always booking 10-20+ rooms for each stay. Just a regular NYC hotel room...though perhaps a bit larger than average?

The photo below has the shade pulled FYI. The view is below.

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The view wasn't too shabby (when the blind wasn't drawn!), with Central Park in the distance:

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The air con worked like a charm for all of my stays--surprisingly. It did turn off when I wasn't in the room, but the small room size did allow it to cool down to 67 F in no time. Shower pressure was adequate, but not impressive. 

The sales manager did leave me a wondeful welcome amenity:

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Service

Service definitely was an issue here for me.

First, there never was any water waiting for me in any of the 3 rooms. As SPG Plat, that should be a foregone conclusion: 2 bottles of water in every SPG Plat room. The sales manager had made sure that I had a welcome amenity...but there was no water? Really? On the other hand, the valets downstairs always were generous and just gave me water when I mentioned the oversight to them--all 3 times. They were great!

Second, when things did go wrong, the hotel was piss-poor in responding. One of my client rooms was supposed to have 2 double beds for 2 persons...but had only a queen bed. It took over an hour to get that sorted...and the repeated calls and transfers between departments made me pretty furious.

On the other hand, the valets were wonderful--as mentioned above. Once, I had forgotten or lost my umbrella...and a valet lent me one without asking for my name or room number. I was very surprised by that wonderful gesture. 

Staff were all friendly and definitely trying to please. But they often had such a nightmarish bureaucracy to handle that it wasn't always very pleasing to me.

Dining

I never dined at the hotel. But there is a Starbucks cafe in the lobby that was very popular!

Location

Although I despise being in the vicinity of Times Square, it is convenient for my business. The Sheraton is 5 blocks north of Times Square--so very convenient if you want to be that close. It's also just 6 blocks up to Central Park. So a very convenient Midtown location it is, assuming you want to be in Midtown!

Overall

The hotel isn't so bad...but it's just way too impersonal and massive for my tastes. I hated it, even though there was nothing wrong or problematic with my room. For the price point, it can be an excellent deal...but I am not sure that would lure me back again with my groups.

Certainly, I would never choose to stay here individually. The lack of even a possibly nicer, more spacious upgraded room category--all room categories pretty much being 250 sq. ft., after all--means that there's little incentive to book here as a Platinum. There's just nothing nicer here, barring a suite. Disappointing.

 

EDIT: Following my stay and posting of this review to TripAdvisor, the hotel apologized for the service misses and posted 5,000 SPG points to my account. This was in addition to 15,000 SPG points previously posted to my account for issues related to the group details for my stays (which I did not include in this review). 

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