Four Seasons Downtown is always my go-to option in NYC. Quick search for a 3 night stay checking in Feb 22nd shows a 3rd night free promo as well taking the base room down to about $670 a night (including tax). Of course a different location downtown vs. Columbus Circle. If both these hotels have promotions guessing there could be others with appealing rates.

Looks nice indeed, especially the pool.
I visited Nyc once only back in 2008. At that time we stayed at the MO, I am looking for a new place for our next stay, may be FS downtown, or Park Hyatt (nice pool with natural light also). I am hesitating a lot :confused:

If you are willing to go downtown/tribeca, then the more natural choice would be Fouquet over FS n'est pas?
but the pool is small and in the basement

The only good thing about PH might be the pool.

The New York Palace also does regular promotions but only the towers level is close to luxury (and if so, the lower end of luxury at best)

I do like the 24 hour grocery store across the street!

Pierre&Cedric, agreed. When visiting New York we have many choices.

For room product, pool, gym, and location, it’s hard to beat the Park Hyatt. With food and beverage and service in general, sometimes they are great but most often they are just passing muster. They particularly struggle with breakfast and dinner service is practically non-existent.

I love the Four Seasons downtown but largely because the service is so good and so warm. You have to book a Hudson room or better to obtain the room size and finish you are likely looking for. The pool is excellent but not quite as good as the Park Hyatt, and there is no hot tub like there is at the Park Hyatt. Though, there are gender separated steam rooms and the FS spa is excellent. All meals at Cut, the Wolfgang Puck restaurant are excellent and service is very good.

I’ve often considered the Peninsula. I think it’s an underrated NYC hotel. The pool with natural light and spa are excellent. Location is great and the service I’ve heard is good.

For an upcoming stay, we are choosing and paying for the FS Downtown, mainly for the service, while the Park Hyatt would have been free on points.

I know you are familiar with Four Seasons and this is not the over the top opulence of the George V or even the FS Park Lane, but prices are also 1/3 of Paris and 1/2 of London.

Have a great stay and I hope you share which hotel you choose and your experience.

We stay both at MONY ( has a pool similar to AmanTokyo and COMOTreasury ) & The Mark , but visits to NYC were before lockdown

I have lived here for many years and have experienced pretty much all of the top hotels in the area. The Peninsula is my favorite NYC luxury hotel.

Which hotel did you end up picking?
We did the same toss up for an upcoming stay and landed on The Whitby over Baccarat. So we're keeping our fingers crossed as it looks whimsical and fun.

Any recent stays at the Ritz Carlton No Mad? I booked a stay there in June.

Well we picked the Baccarat, but we had to cancel because my wife and I both caught got sick right before we were supposed to to be going. It was fortunate because our home got bombed with a winter storm and we wouldn't have been able to get back. We will be rescheduling soon.

haven't stayed there but i go for work drinks often since I'm around the corner - very strong on beverages + their rooftop bar. Jose Andres was great when it first opened but the menu's being watered down w/ less interesting options and more standard fare. At least you're in NoMad w/ great F&B options and Flatiron is a hop down

thanks for the nudge, I ended up booking FS Downtown to give it a go and see how it is living life in the Financial District instead of Midtown/C.Park. Looking forward to it!.

Just curious has anyone stayed in the Fifth Avenue Hotel already and if so how was the experience? I have a trip coming up to NYC next month and am really torn between FS downtown and trying this new hotel?

I've never heard of the 5th Ave hotel, it looks nice. The FS has a modern feel, this place looks more eclectic. Have you stayed at the Beekman before? The 5th Ave hotel room photos reminded me of the Beekman a little.

No I haven’t been to Beekman before but yeah FS’s decor is definitely on the modern end of the spectrum. Even though I really enjoyed my stay there last September, I am trying to change it up this time and looking for something classic and boutique. All the pictures on the 5th Ave hotel website then caught my attention.

Classic and boutique in Manhattan? The Mark.

The Lowell is another good one.

I've stayed at both, the Beekman is very nice too. I think both the FS and the Beekman are the two nicest hotels downtown although that 5th Ave hotel looks pretty good too but wouldn't be considered downtown, more like midtown.

In any event, the Beekman definitely has that classic boutique feel to it, the hotel was designed within a historical landmark building. The rooms are a little dark but beautifully done and restaurants within are fantastic. One is owned by Daniel Bolud the other by Tom Colicchio. I would definitely consider the Beekman as well as another option for a stay downtown.

I have a bit of a soft spot for the Beekman, but I feel it’s worthwhile noting it is very far away from the minimum standards required for the categorisation of “luxury” from this forum.

Maybe, but the Beekman is considered a 5 star hotel so they hit some sort of minimum standard to make that achievement.

Also I just looked it up. US News & World Reports ranks 609 hotels in NYC, they have the Beekman ranked in the 9th spot on their list for 2024.

25 Best Hotels in New York City for 2024
https://travel.usnews.com/hotels/new_york_ny/



​​​​​​​

Beekman is quite nice. You’ll find services that normally comes with luxury hotels such as evening turn down, slippers, and door man.

The rooms are charming and historical. Choosing a luxury hotel really depends on individual taste. In cities like NYC with so many hotels built over the years, there isn’t really a hierarchical list of what’s better than another. Choose a location then decide if you want large or boutique, modern or historical, professional or quirky, cool or charming.

Beekman would be in the downtown, historical, boutique with charming decor and quirky room layout category of luxury hotels.

Agree with all of your comments above. I posted that US News link / reference more as a response to the poster who said the Beekman is not luxury enough to be mentioned within this forum which was an asinine statement.

This is right. Although, a very different sort of thing (not classic but definitely small) - Aman NY which is excellent.

Perhaps I missed something in my stays, but outside of New York the Beekman would surely be considered a relatively standard 4* hotel costing $100-200 a night. In the New York market there’s no way it can be said to compete with the Baccarat, the Pierre, Mandarin Oriental or Four Seasons. Outside of New York this forum generally won’t consider something like the Conrad Tokyo a luxury hotel or the average private villa resort in South East Asia.

The term is obviously flexible and open to negotiation, but this strikes me as stretching it quite some miles farther than usually considered.

As an independent traveler who almost never bothers the concierge and is rarely interested in any interactions with the staff, I don't see much difference between this and the other hotels you listed here.

I'm surprised you listed MO in the luxury category but consider this a standard *4 hotel. MO doesn't even have a functioning restaurant, while the Beekman has two excellent ones.

Who needs the US News & World Reports opinion on NYC's best hotels when we have European Pete over on Flyertalk showing us all the way!

A closer look at that list invites confusion as data seem to derive, at least in part, from Tripadvisor. I use TA as part of my research but give little credence to its rankings. See also my separate thread on TA.

Now, then, the stars: these are often unreliable, especially at the five-star level. There are no uniform criteria and many hotels self assign their touted stars.

It’s routine on this forum to debate luxury status, just part of our nature.

That's incorrect. TripAdvisor and US News & World Reports use two different methodologies ranking hotels. TripAdvisor ranks by highest online reviews on their site from all travelers in a category. US News uses both traveler reviews and a panel of expert opinions combined to rank properties no matter the category. This approach is broader, and weeds out overly positive or negative reviews which to me, makes US News quite a bit more accurate.

With all that being said, rankings are still very subjective, but you will see that TripAdvisor's list of top rated 5 star NYC hotels is totally different from US News & World Reports list which appears to be closer to reality....

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g...rk-Hotels.html

This kind of sums it up.

This sub has become one of my favorite web haunts, but the considerable amount of energy spent creating needless conjecture about what 'luxury' means is the only downside. It just strikes me as regressive, pedantic, and ultimately a lost cause.
Not much to be gained from it, other than keeping the sub 'clean' i suppose.
Beyond that, debating is of course great, but some frustrating amount of debate here simply boils down to one defending one's own opinion, over and over (and armed with no 'facts', just still more aopinions), well after it's been clearly stated.
Any debates about hotels, of course, are based purely on a plethora of wildly disparate opinions, and very few definitive 'facts'.
Really excellent hotels routinely get disparaged here - usually by folks who've never been to them - the pile-on builds up, and the hotel gets banished. Meanwhile, hotels and hotel marques that have rarely read as 'luxury' to me (the several PH's I've experienced being one example) get lauded here with the same fervor as for Cheval or Airelles.
And that's ok with me. I disagree, but jeez, what's to be gained by taking the time to say so, by claiming they're 'wrong'?

I just don't understand it. Everything else about the sub seems so wonderfully reasonable, helpful, inclusive.

(Certainly when someone posts something here about needing a 10-day vacation in Paris for $900.....that kind of post needs some tending to and a move.
But i don't see many users - even new ones - posting reviews of. or asking questions about Ramada Inns here.
Or even Fairmonts.)

Sorry, but i don't believe there's a single authority or entity that can empirically codify what 'luxury' means to everyone. Even among this forum's extremely wise and well-traveled participants.

For my own (very personal) tastes, i definitely consider Beekman a luxury hotel.
It's NYC-quirky, beautiful, and really smartly restored. The rooms are actually big for NYC standards. The lobby area and inner atrium are pure eye candy. "They don't build 'em like this anymore".
It wouldn't be my first choice of neighborhood, but neither is the UES and the Mark is probably my favorite hotel in the city.
To me, Beekman and Mark are both 'luxury' - There's probably 10-15 hotels in Manhattan i'd characterize as luxury - simply very different flavors of luxury.
The Beekman's flavor geared, undoubtedly with intention, to a different kind of 'luxury' traveler than The Mark's,

The Beekman is a Thompson hotel which is a chain owned by Hyatt.

I don’t mind the round-robin discussions of what is and is not luxury. This IS the Luxury Hotels and Travel Forum.

Well aware of this.
In contrast to the Hyatt-proper brands, though, I have really liked the four Thompsons I've stayed at over the years.
While not 100% blown-off-the-planet by them, I consider them 100% luxury. Like any marque, Thompson has its own style, rhythm and unique set of pecularities.
(This sub doesn't always look so kindly on the Thompson marque either, in fact, anyhow.)
In any case, the Thompson brand and the Park Hyatt brand could hardly be more disparate.
Park Hyatt is the brand i noted in my post as a marque that's feted nearly across-the-board here, in stark contrast to Thompson.
I'd choose Beekman all-day-every-day over any Park Hyatt I've stayed at.
Again, this is just one opinion. Your mileage may vary.

Me neither and of course it is.
Discussions are one thing, but authoritative stances and dying-on-a-hill only in service of passionately contradicting someone else's opinion (about a hotel!) are the specific kind of 'discussions' i'm talking about.
I'm not claiming they're a frequent occurrence here; if they were i wouldn't be checking in on the weekly to read great stuff about places i want to go.
But, sadly, we're all human. And i suppose no public internet forum can totally avoid these sorts of flare-ups, but it's a bummer when they happen here.
(And again, more frustratingly, often by people who themselves admit they've never seen the properties they're endeavoring to destroy in textual form.)

This public forum actually has a great track record since I've been reading it, the mods do a great job at getting rid of uberhotheads, scams, people asking about $300-a-night hotels, etc.
But when i see it here, it's a bummer. Like a fantastic garden with one or two small patches of weeds.

When I do see an opinion here (anywhere, really) that i'm not quite square with, it's so much easier to just move on to the next post.
So that's what i usually try to do.
If someone's giving out actual, verifiably false information, that's another matter.

Would love thoughts from the group on The Lowell (entry level room is 400 sq. feet) versus the Carlyle Madison King room (Madison ave view). I’ve not stayed at either and I do like the restaurant at the Carlyle, but haven’t been for years. They are very close to each other and the location is suitable for where I need to be. Thanks in advance!

For me, choosing The Lowell is a no-brainer here. Even their entry-level rooms don't feel basic; they have a residential charm that's hard to define. I would opt for The Carlyle if you're really into the bar scene there, which is indeed fantastic. I also prefer the service at The Lowell; it feels more personal and warm. This is an entirely unbiased opinion, even though I tend to get better perks when booking through Rosewood Elite...

The bathrooms are much larger at The Lowell..... if that matters to you. The Jacques Bar at The Lowell is great, but it can be empty. Whereas the Carlyle is usually buzzy.
If you hit the right timing at The Lowell upgrades can be great. They have a lot of paid suite guests, but sometimes they oversell rooms when those types of clients are not around as much (summer time for example)

Big Lowell fan.
One of my favorites in town.
They've been delivering at a consistently high level for a long time now.

Haven't been to Carlyle post Rosewood. It's never been a hotel I've gravitated towards, except to hang at Bemelman's. Saw such great talent there... Barbara Cook, Joe Bushkin.
But I'd choose the Lowell.

How could you forget Bobby Short.:)

I wholeheartedly agree.

The Carlyle is a wonderfully flamboyant grande dame with a distinct and constant buzz.

The Lowell is a serene pied-a-terre. You'll swear the entire hotel staff are there just to serve you.

Many years ago, I saw Cybill Shepherd perform at the Carlyle. She missed her true calling as she was a masterful cabaret performer. It was truly an extraordinary show in a magical setting.

Alas, never caught him. My parents did, there, many times. He was, by all accounts, the OG master of that room.

There's some newer openings in NYC I've been meaning to check out. 5th ave hotel. Fouquets. That Casa Cipriani has been on my list too.

The Lowell it is! Thank you all so much very helpful. I came across the YouTube Artisien video on The Lowell and it looks fabulous . FYI both the Peninsula and the St. Regis are undergoing some renovations. Considered the Mandarin and Park Hyatt as well.