jayer

I'll confess I have not been there in years, but other than location is it a big loss? I remember sad rooms but a good club. Mrs. Jayer really didn't like the place unless unless that was all I could find at the last minute. Guess I need a new back up for my backup.

krazykanuck

Wow. This was the closest Marriott to my old office. Marriott has The Lexington, which is an AC property, just one or two blocks south of there. Still surprising though. Was the only full service Marriott in the area.

Kacee

With no international tourists, the 14 day quarantine, and people wanting to get out of the city rather than in, Manhattan hotels are just getting killed. Sadly we will see much more of this.

Ryno1234

I always liked it. usually got a larger room which always helped. They were a little outdated. I LOVED the M Club. always had a good spread and plenty of room. i even liked the gym on the top floor. location of hotel was good as well. oh well. thats a big ol empty building now.

pinniped

I had mixed feelings about this place. Long ago its lounge was a circus overrun with people, but my most recent visit with the renovated M club was pretty good. I never had to worry about getting a tiny odd-shaped room here. It held up the classic Marriott brand standard well, something I felt was rare in New York. Marriott still has good luxury options...and then there's unimpressive stuff like the Lexington. I had mostly shifted my NYC stays to Hilton in 2019 but I will still miss this hotel.

krazykanuck

Hilton Times Square is apparently closing permanently. Off brand, but fits with your view. I stayed there 2-3 yrs ago an it was a decent property despite the cheap version of brekkie.

Unfortunately the Midtown properties are at the whims of local business traffic. Almost nobody stays in Midtown if they can help it. And I say this as somebody who used to live on the UES.

Andie007

... unless homeless (which is causing a lot of problems in Midwotn [West]).

https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs...meless-in-city

Mr. BoH

Sad to see this place go. They seemed to be in the middle of a room renovation, and the new ones were pretty nice (for Midtown).

NYC Bonvoy properties seem to be dropping like flies: TS Edition, Marriott East Side, W Downtown, Maxwell... are there others I am missing?

Not surprising I guess, but sad. If demand ever reaches pre-covid levels (which may never happen) there will be an enormous shortage of rooms.

Ryno1234

I saw an article that the Four Seasons and the Plaza Hotel are both planning on re-opening in NYC after closing during COVID. It got me thinking about the Marriott East Side on Lexington that closed during the pandemic. That was always my go to property in NYC. I did a little searching but couldn't find any recent updates. Anyone know if there are plans to re open it? Sell it? It wasnt a small property, so that has to be wroth something. Always seemed full too.

Just curious.

James Luckard

The Plaza reopened in 2021, I think you mean the Plaza Athenee. They just announced that one is reopening as a Nobu property in 2026.

The hotel industry hasn't recovered in NY. Lots of hotels are being converted to residential. Just recently it was announced that the massive Hudson Hotel and the equally massive Stewart Hotel (the former Governor Clinton) would be converted to apartments, while the DoubleTree Metropolitan, formerly the Loews Summit, right near the Marriott East Side, is being converted to a student dormitory.

The owners of the Marriott East Side sold the structure at a MASSIVE loss of nearly half its value in February, the new owners said they may also convert it to residential. There are tons of articles about the sale at Google:

https://www.google.com/search?q=new+...&bih=927&dpr=1

Ryno1234

thanks for the info.

this is the article i was referring to.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-of-...backs-708cd943

SP03

The Plaza isn’t fully open yet according to the article. It’s going to be either a FS (if the current one doesn’t open) or a Raffles.

James Luckard

The Plaza reopened from its COVID closure in May 2021, according to news articles online. It's still managed by Fairmont, for the moment. I just checked, it's bookable tonight.

The restaurants at the Plaza closed long before the pandemic. After the 2008 conversion to condos and the "renovation" by the Israeli developers, the Edwardian Room was leased for retail use, while the Oak Room and Bar were leased in a bizarre and disastrous arrangement with an outside vendor, separate from the hotel business. The Oak Room closed in 2011, in a flurry of lawsuits:

https://nypost.com/2016/08/04/all-th...amed-oak-room/

The Steven Spielberg film "The Post" was filmed in the vacant Oak Room and Oak Bar in early 2017.

The retail spaces in the Edwardian Room failed too, and it was converted to a function room for the hotel, as was the Oak Room, after the vendors were kicked out. Both rooms are bookable as function rooms right now on the website. I'm sure the Katara renovation will reopen them.

I think the Todd English Food Hall in the basement is the only facility at the hotel that closed due to COVID and hasn't reopened.

Just before the pandemic, the hotel under Fairmont was only operating with the small handful of remaining hotel rooms facing 58th Street and the function rooms, as far as I know. It was a shadow of its former self.

pinniped

This seems peculiar to me. When I look at rates in NYC for better hotels, they're as sky-high as ever. So it seems like demand is there, right? Is the city itself making it harder for hotels to operate, even at $400/nt for basic rooms?

What structurally has to change? For years pre-covid I assumed it was simply not enough total rooms (unless you went in January-February). Then covid killed demand....and now we're 2 years later and the market seems pretty messed up (in terms of hotels being able to stay open and fully operating), and to be honest I don't exactly get why. So many other parts of the travel industry are fully raking in record revenues right now.

KRSW

What has to change? Leadership. I'm not a fan of Giuliani, but I'll give him credit for making the city someplace I wanted to visit. I'm seeing multiple Marriott properties in NYC with rates <$200/night right now... when you factor in real inflation, that's <$150/nt, in 2018 dollars which was unheard of this time of year.

DeBlasio and Cuomo killed NYC, and Adams isn't far behind. No more real pizza in NYC, thanks Adams. NY still had COVID mandates (masks, etc.) still going as late as Feb 2023. Many long-established businesses closed. NYC lost much of its culture from this. Many of the restaurants and shops I enjoyed are no longer in business. Even chains closed their branches, stores, and restaurants in NYC. Add in onerous and asinine regulations, and it makes no sense to have a business in NYC now. See Louis Rossman's rants on YouTube about all of the garbage he had to put up with while he had his business in NYC.

Then add in the increase in crime and drug use. You can't go anywhere in NYC and not get blasted by the smell of marijuana now. People don't feel safe. Even people I know who've lived in NYC for many years aren't taking the subway as much as they used to. Many have left, permanently. Why would anyone want to visit someplace like this? NYC's just following down the same path San Francisco has been going for awhile. The owners of the San Francisco Hilton Union Square and Parc 55 stopped making payments and walked away from the properties.

I used to love NYC, frequently visiting for work and leisure. I had seriously thought about moving there. 10 years ago, it was great. The last time I spent any large amount of time in NYC was 2015. The last time I was there was in 2018 and by then the writing was already on the wall. I've not been back since. Some of my family went back last year, but they too commented that NYC isn't what it used to be, and they refused to take the subway that trip.

For reference, Florida started reopening in May 2020. Disney reopened July 2020. Again, NYC still had mandates in place in February 2023(!). You can't just turn businesses and people's lives ON and OFF like a light switch. Some people obviously didn't like the mandates, because Florida became a zoo starting in May 2020 with people from up north visiting and moving here. For reference, the airport near me:
Aircraft Operations:
Jun 2019: 8,583
Jun 2020: 11,380
They've not released stats for June 2023, but May 2023 had 19,349.