Finding New York City boutique hotels under $250

I’m going to New York in two weeks and have spent at least four hours already looking for a room that suits both our budget and the ideal location — close to Manhattan and Chelsea, where we’ll be visiting friends. First, I had to get over the idea that three-star rooms can cost more than $200/night. So, we upped our budget to $250.

All the big travel websites such as Expedia, Hotels.com and Orbitz can help you find lodging within your budget and in the area you want to be in. Since I don’t know that much about New York hotels, I spent extra time reading reviews. Here is a short list of tips and the hotel we ended up booking.

1. Book in advance. You want to book far enough out that you have the most options available. I found boutique hotels that I wanted to stay in, but two weeks in advance was cutting it too close. There were some hotels I would’ve loved to have stayed in, but they were already full.

2. Stay a Sunday. We’ve come to know that staying overnight on a Saturday can lower your airfare, and a similar rule applies to Sundays in New York hotels. A number of higher-priced hotels give steep discounts on Sundays. See NYC Sunday Stays for special savings. After knowing this rule, you’ll see some hotels of all levels with slightly lower prices on Sundays.

3. Trust that boutique hotels exist. I saw a lot of two-star hotels and big chain hotels within my budget. Before giving in to lesser-quality rooms than I’m used to, I started searching for boutique hotels on my own, then checked to see if they were available on the big sites at a better price (than the hotel’s website offered). Here are two resources that helped me find alternative hotels under $250 in New York:

• Four New York boutique hotels at a reasonable price
• Hotelrooms.com had a great section on boutique hotels with good descriptions. Sure, a lot of them were over my price, but I found some that were within my budget and created my list from there.

4. Don’t overanalyze user reviews. Once I had a list of hotels where I wanted to stay, I started reading reviews. Expedia had some hotel reviews, but TripAdvisor still seems to have the most. I got bottlenecked in the booking process because every hotel I wanted had mixed reviews. For each hotel I was considering, there were some people who had a perfectly wonderful stay, and others who were adamantly saying don’t stay here. But as I ran down my list, nearly all the hotels I was considering listed some comments like this. I quickly figured out that rooms are small in New York, elevators break, staff can be unfriendly and, if you book way too far in advance — say seven or eight months — you might want to check in a few times between booking and arrival.

5. I used Facebook to find a hotel. Finally, I narrowed my search by putting a message on my Facebook. I said I was trying to find a hotel room in NYC for $250. A friend stepped up and said that he’d stayed at the Hotel Thirty Thirty. He added that the rooms were tiny, but that he would stay there again. Like the others, this hotel had mixed reviews, but because it was a friend of ours who said he’d go back, that’s what tipped the scale.

6. Compare prices (and priorities). Once we decided on the Thirty Thirty, I checked to see if prices were cheaper on the big travel sites. Rooms were indeed cheaper on Expedia than the hotel’s website. One difference: Booking through the hotel directly allowed us the option of booking a room with a king-sized bed (pictured). So that gave us another decision: cheaper room or bigger bed? We took the bigger bed for $249/night (pre-tax).

Here are four hotels within our $250/night budget that I was considering:

Avalon Hotel
16 E. 32nd St.
(888) 442-8256(6) -[spells Hi Avalon]

Hotel 373
373 Fifth Ave.
(800) 515-8373

Marcel Hotel New York
201 E. 24th St.
(800) 555-7555

On the Ave Hotel
2178 Broadway at 77th Street
(800) 509-7598

Good luck with your hotel searches! And let us know where you like to stay in NYC.

— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel Deal Blogger

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 7:00 pm by Jen Leo and is filed under Business Travel, East Coast, News, Tips & Advice, Travel Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.