Hotel prices are absurd this week. This isn’t an “oh silly tourist, New York prices are high!” kind of thing." We just moved out a few years ago and we travel in monthly or so–here’s a short list of our most recent five stays:[ul][li]Roosevelt $115[/li][li]The Roger $101[/li][li]Millenium Hilton $160[/li][li]Sheraton Tribeca $215[/li][li]Sheraton Times Sq $125[/ul][/li]
We’re booking for tonight and tomorrow and prices are showing up three to four times that. Even the two and three star Holiday Inns are coming in higher than that. It could be a glitch in the matrix, but when we hit such a bump it’s usually due to a major event (e.g. fleet or fashion week), but I’m not seeing what’s up. Anyone?
NM
Reported as spam. Oops. I guess its not?
Playoffs. Hockey and basketball.
No, not spam. I didn’t mention how/where we’re hotel shopping–that’s not necessarily germane. I’m wondering what/if there’s a large-scale event going on in the city.
ETA: Ah ha. Thanks. I have no connection to sports, so these would be completely off our radar. So two New York teams made it to finals? Cool for them; sucks for us. 
Sorry Rhythmdvl.
I’m surprised that New York City couldn’t handle a few play off games. You would think that most of the fans that would attend already live there. I don’t follow sports either but are they even close to the finals already?
There must be a few thousand tourists who have rented rooms to participate in the Five Boro Bike Tour this coming weekend. I don’t know how much of a dent this can put in the city’s hotel availability, but I would imagine it’s no worse than a typical convention of chiropractors.
My first thought was: are those prices really that high for a ‘last minute’ booking in NYC? I remember even hostel beds being above 30 dollars in Manhattan.
Despite conventional wisdom, we’ve found last minute booking has generally been the way to go with larger cities/areas. Whether it’s NYC or Fort Lauderdale, if there are a large number of hotels scooping up a remainder usually saves a ton of money. Priceline’s hype about saving 50 percent or more over rack rates is not just puffery. And again, having lived in the city for years I already know about it’s associated costs–and being a cheap bastard the first thing I do when we book a room is compare it to Orbitz, Expedia and even Priceline’s own listing to verify that the savings aren’t mere marketing.
We usually pay anywhere from $100 to $200 per night for a four-star hotel. We’ve had bad stays (e.g. fleet week) where there is a massive influx of tourists, or we usually have to come in for the UN General Assembly–another large-scale event that soaks up hotel rooms. We’ve been to sold out shows at MSG and didn’t notice much of a change, but with two playoffs, who knows?
I’m going to have my teeth cleaned. Otherwise, same-o-same-o.
Some kind of marathon or other big sport event? The biking event mentioned already?
I didn’t pay attention to sporting-event news, but I think I saw something very recently about some big event coming up sometime (soon?) – It was in reference to the Boston Marathon bombing, and how New York is now cooking up some uber-security for whatever it is.
That may be the Long Island marathon, which is this weekend. I don’t know if that would cause hotels to fill up in the city, though.
I’m not sure what time of year your previous trips were, but in addition to the other factors mentioned (5-boro bike tour; playoffs) April-May is primo school trip season in NYC. I work near 9/11 memorial and the influx of school groups is really noticeable.
Those prices look insanely cheap. If you asked me to guesstimate the price of a decent-ish hotel room in New York I’d say at least $300 a night.
I still get “special offers” from hotels there landing in my inbox occasionally quoting $450 a night and making out it’s some kind of bargain. For $101 I’d expect to be sharing a room with a wino.
I’m with Colophon on this one - I lived in NYC until a few years ago, and still travel there for work on occasion. I’ve never seen prices as low as what are referenced in the OP, even with corporate discounts (my firm actually nails down some pretty good discounts0.
Given how we travel, insanely low prices are the norm for us (ETA: in the city or similar high-traffic areas with lots of hotels). When we leave the time-vortex that spits out prices from the nineteen fifties and sixties, we figure something’s afoot—hence the OP. I can go back further with more hotels/prices, but they generally fall in the same range ($100-$200) for four-star hotels—the Benjamin, the Algonquin, the Andaz, the W, Marriotts, several Hiltons, the Barclay and so on. Stays in places like Fort Lauderdale/Miami are similar–the Diplomat, the Dream South Beach etc for a hundred bucks or so. We’re in the city now and it’s terrible that we’re paying rack rate, but this is an anomaly (er, “terrible” in a First World Problems sort of way).
This isn’t a sooper-seecret method or some insider handshake kind of thing. It’s basically the same bidding system they advertise the hell out of. Among other things, Manhattan has about ten ‘neighbourhoods’ to bid on, we know it well enough to stay anywhere (none of the 4* hotels are in bad neighbourhoods (not that there are any left in Manhattan) or far from anywhere else), and knowing that our worst-case scenario is simply paying rack rate we can bid at the last minute. This makes their “save up to 60 % percent” tagline a reality, not just an ad slogan.
Your scheme is dependent on there being unused inventory; occupancy of NYC hotels was 87% for 2012 ( compared to about 60% hotel occupancy nationwide) and early May is a high season.
So I’m not shocked you can get some great deals on truly last minute bookings. But I am actually surprised you’ve never encountered nearly complete occupancy before while visiting NYC during the early summer. It’s not that unusual. I read May 2010 occupancy was 92%, and tourist numbers are up since then (as is new hotel construction, but that takes time).
Last time I stayed at the Millenium Hilton it was $219 a night, cheapest rate with special email offer etc.
So you lucked into a really good deal, and now that the WTC site is getting back to life (and less construction noise?) the price is more in line with other NYC higher-end hotels.
I generally found the last minute prices were more likely to be high, not low.
Again, we’ve been coming back to the city for years. Of the thirty or so trips in our recent history, there are a few stand-outs where we paid more than a couple hundred bucks for a four star hotel. Other than those anomalies, we’ve been in and out of the city (and elsewhere) at all times of the year for absurdly small numbers. Almost always.
We have to be here for the UN General Assembly, and know ahead of time that booking will be tight. We know to stay away if possible when there’s a major city-wide event (above mentioned fleet/fashion week, T’day parade, etc.). And every once in a while the wheel spins against us without us knowing why. When that’s happened in the past we either guess at the cause, chalk it up to bad timing (e.g. high tourist week) or wonder if something was going on. This time instead of wondering I thought to post.
And again, this is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary here. It’s not a secret Web site. We’re not special club members or know how to hack their system (there is a small bidding strategy, but nothing complicated). I’m not a smartypants, extra-lucky, and I’m not a special little snowflake. The clerks have no information as to how much we paid, we get regular rooms, etc. The hotels really do rate the stars (see above list). They advertise the fuck out of “up to 60 percent off.” That’s not puffery, that’s how their business model works–in nine out of ten cases. Actually, it’s more than nine out of ten if you count the times we’ve saved more than 60 percent. And that savings is off of the ‘regular’ price you see on their own site, which is always within five bucks of the same room if you booked through Travelocity, Expedia, Orbits, etc.
They just didn’t come through for us this time 'round, and was wondering if there was an obvious reason.
ETA: The Millennium Hilton, Andaz and a couple other downtown boutiques are a special case and actually highlight how last-minute traveling works out for us. If we’re heading in over a weekend, we’ll either bid there first if we want to save as much or put in a bid down there later if we don’t mind spending the extra twenty-five to fifty bucks. The thing is, those hotels mainly cater to the Wall Street/business crowd, so are often at less than full occupancy on a Saturday. We can come in at a hundred bucks or so–the hotel gets a good chunk of dollars they wouldn’t have had, P’line gets a small bit for brokering the deal, and we get a great weekend. A bit deader than we sometimes like, but increadibly easy to get around from there. Just no 3AM gyro carts.