Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel: The Room

A bit of caution when being assigned a room at the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel: the two rooms at the south end at the end of the hallway and northeast corner are rather small in size with a narrow window compared to the other standard rooms on each floor. Some of the furnishings are even condensed for the room. Twice I've been initially assigned these rooms and both times requested for a standard room along Broadway.

If I had not stayed at the hotel before, I would not have realized the disparity in room size. To add insult the room initially assigned to me for this stay was on a low floor facing the scaffolding that surrounded the building with a sign to keep the shades closed while work is ongoing. Clearly these rooms should have been sold at a marked down rate. But in a city where location is everything unsuspecting hotel guests would likely settle for the room.

When the porter brought my bags to my room he wonderfully called the front desk letting them know that I had stayed at the hotel before and requested for another room. He picked up my new card keys and met me at my reassigned room.

Room 1807 was perfect. It was a high floor facing Broadway with large windows to let in lots of natural light. The room feels spacious even with a king size bed dominating the room. Rates for a standard room start from $239 to over $500 a night before taxes depending on the time of year and length of stay. The funny thing about this room it was the same one I was assigned in 2008 when I booked a stay after the Renaissance's complete renovation.

The room is indeed modern but still retains a warm feeling with lots of wood accents along the built-in bed side tables, headboard and molding along the ceiling. The stark white of the duvet, the royal blue of the headboard and earth tones of the carpet and other furnishings adds to this stylish interior.

The lounge chair by the window offers opportunity to gaze out the window and the ergonomic desk chair is perfect for road warriors catching up on some work. The room includes lots of storage space from the generous closet space to drawers along the bed night stands and a set of drawers below another great feature in the room: the 37-inch flat screen television.

The window are advertised as soundproof and though some traffic noise do rise even to the 18th floor, they keep most of the noise from Times Square below to a minimum. The rooms are about 330 square feet with rooms on higher floors priced at higher rates. Also some rooms have no connecting door to the room the next door which offers an extra feeling of privacy but these rooms are few but could be requested on the reservation or at check-in. Most floors have at least one room termed as "larger guest rooms" measure about 370 square feet and also cost more. With only 26 floors and 305 rooms, the hotel does retain an intimate "boutique" feeling compared some of the behemoths of neighbor hotels.

This is one of a series of posts in review of the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel.