The Best Hotel in New York, and Who Each One Is Wrong For
Best all-round: Casablanca HotelThere is no best hotel in New York, only the best one for how you travel. Ten picks across five neighbourhoods and four price tiers, with every walk measured and every drawback stated.
What is the best hotel in New York?
For a first visit, the Casablanca Hotel: a small boutique two minutes from Times Square that stays quiet despite the address. Best value is Pod Times Square, if you accept a genuinely small room. The famous names, the Plaza and the Mercer, are the right answer only when the hotel itself is the point of the trip.
Which one fits how you travel
Find the row that sounds like your trip. Every pick below names the traveller it is wrong for, so you can book on fit rather than on rank.
| If you are | Book | Why |
|---|---|---|
| On a first visit for the icons and Broadway | Casablanca Hotel | Two minutes from Times Square, quiet, breakfast included. Book early. |
| Watching every dollar but staying central | Pod Times Square | A genuinely small room in exchange for a Midtown address at the city's fairest price. |
| Travelling with children | Hotel Beacon | Kitchenettes, bigger rooms, Central Park and the dinosaurs within a walk. |
| Here for the hotel as much as the city | The Plaza | The address and the building are the experience. Accept dated corners. |
| After the best hotel money currently buys | The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad | The 2024 readers' survey winner, and the newest of the top tier. |
| A downtown person: galleries, food, no observation decks | The Mercer | SoHo loft living with hotel service. Midtown is a subway ride you will rarely take. |
| Chasing the skyline view itself | 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge | The only way to see the whole postcard is from outside it. |
- Free cancellation on most rooms
- No booking fee
- Prices on Trip.com
What the bands mean
Rates are shown as bands, not numbers. New York hotels run live booking engines with some of the most aggressive dynamic pricing anywhere, so the same room can triple between a wet Tuesday in January and marathon weekend. A figure printed here would be wrong before you read it. The bands describe where each hotel sits against the others, and the live rate for your dates opens through the button on each card. One flat cost worth knowing before any of them: most Manhattan hotels add a mandatory nightly destination or facilities fee at the desk, so compare total price, not headline rate.
- €
- the cheapest tier that is still clean and central, mostly compact rooms
- €€
- mid-range Manhattan
- €€€
- upper tier, boutique or landmark buildings
- €€€€
- the city's most expensive addresses
The 10 hotels, and who each one is wrong for
Walking times are to Times Square. Walking times are real pedestrian routes to Times Square, measured through OpenStreetMap foot routing at 4.5 km/h, not straight lines. Times Square is the anchor because it is the centre of the theatre district and the point most first visits orbit, not because you should linger there. Manhattan is flat and gridded, so past about twenty minutes the subway takes over: every downtown pick below sits within a few minutes of a line that reaches Midtown in a quarter of an hour.
Theatre District, West 43rd Street
Casablanca Hotel
€€€Best all-roundA 48-room Moroccan-themed boutique on a side street off Times Square, with free breakfast and evening wine and cheese.
- Walk to Times Square
- 2 minutes, 140 m to Times Square
- Right for
- A first visit built around Broadway and the Midtown sights. You are two minutes from Times Square on a street that somehow stays calm.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone who wants a pool, a gym worth the name, or big-hotel services. Forty-eight rooms means none of that.
- The catch
- The catch: It books out far ahead precisely because it is small and well loved, so deciding late usually means not staying here.
Bryant Park end of the Theatre District
LUMA Hotel Times Square
€€€A modern glass tower on West 41st, a block from Bryant Park and four minutes from Times Square.
- Walk to Times Square
- 4 minutes, 330 m to Times Square
- Right for
- Anyone who wants Times Square access without sleeping in the middle of it. The Bryant Park end of the block is the civilised end.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone after character. It is sleek, comfortable and anonymous, and it knows it.
- The catch
- The catch: Rooms facing 41st Street get the city noise that the address implies. Ask high and rear.
West 42nd Street, by Port Authority
Pod Times Square
€Best valueA budget hotel of deliberately tiny, well-designed rooms on West 42nd Street, ten minutes from the square.
- Walk to Times Square
- 10 minutes, 770 m to Times Square
- Right for
- Anyone who treats the room as a place to sleep and the city as the point. The price buys a location that normally costs three times as much.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone travelling with big luggage or planning to spend time in the room. A pod is a pod, and two large suitcases will not fit.
- The catch
- The catch: The block, between Eighth and Ninth by Port Authority, is the scruffiest on this list. Fine, but not the postcard.
Fifth Avenue at Central Park
The Plaza
€€€€The 1907 landmark at the corner of Central Park, still the most famous hotel address in the city.
- Walk to Times Square
- 21 minutes, 1.6 km up Fifth Avenue to Times Square
- Right for
- A once-in-a-lifetime trip where the hotel is part of the story. The park is across the road and the building is the postcard.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone paying this much for modernity. You are buying history and address; the newest luxury towers beat it on rooms and tech.
- The catch
- The catch: It runs partly as residences and event space, and on gala nights the public areas belong to the event, not to you.
NoMad, West 28th Street
The Ritz-Carlton New York, NoMad
€€€€A 50-storey glass tower from 2022 in NoMad, the readers' pick for the city's best hotel in Conde Nast Traveler's 2024 awards survey.
- Walk to Times Square
- 18 minutes, 1.3 km to Times Square
- Right for
- Anyone who wants the newest top-tier hotel in Manhattan rather than the most storied one, with views from every floor that matters.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone booking New York for old New York. This is the opposite of the Plaza in every way that word implies.
- The catch
- The catch: NoMad is a restaurant neighbourhood, not a sights neighbourhood, so almost everything on a first-visit list is a walk or a ride away.
Upper West Side, Broadway at 75th
Hotel Beacon
€€An Upper West Side standby with kitchenettes in every room, three blocks from Central Park and near the Natural History Museum.
- Walk to Times Square
- 37 minutes, 2.8 km, or the 1/2/3 subway to Times Square
- Right for
- Families. Kitchenettes, larger rooms, a supermarket across the street and the park and museum within a walk. Nothing downtown offers that combination at this price.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone whose evenings are Broadway and Midtown. You are 37 minutes on foot or a subway ride from the theatre district every night.
- The catch
- The catch: It is comfortable rather than stylish, and the decor has stayed a decade behind the rate.
West Village, by the Hudson
The Jane
€A 1908 former sailors' hotel on the Hudson in the West Village, with famously tiny cabin rooms and a grand bar.
- Walk to Times Square
- 44 minutes, 3.3 km, or the A/C/E from 14th Street to Times Square
- Right for
- Solo travellers and anyone who wants downtown character at a hostel-adjacent price. The ballroom bar is a destination in itself.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Light sleepers and anyone who dislikes shared bathrooms, which most of the cabin rooms use.
- The catch
- The catch: The cabins are 50 square feet. That is not a small room, it is a berth, and the charm wears off fast if you did not want a berth.
SoHo, Mercer Street
The Mercer
€€€€SoHo's original luxury boutique in a Romanesque loft building, long the hotel of choice for people who could stay anywhere.
- Walk to Times Square
- 53 minutes, 4.0 km, or the R/W from Prince Street to Times Square
- Right for
- Anyone whose New York is downtown: galleries, shopping and restaurants rather than observation decks. The rooms feel like the lofts around them.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: First-timers doing the Midtown icons. Everything on that list is a subway ride from here.
- The catch
- The catch: SoHo's streets below are a shopping crowd by day and a bar crowd by night. Quiet means the rooms, not the block.
East Village, the Bowery
The Bowery Hotel
€€€A velvet-and-timber downtown hotel on the Bowery with one of the city's best lobby bars and a loyal fashion crowd.
- Walk to Times Square
- 49 minutes, 3.7 km, or the 6 from Astor Place to Times Square
- Right for
- Anyone who wants downtown New York with atmosphere laid on thick, and evenings that start in the lobby.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Families and early sleepers. The scene is the point here, and the scene runs late.
- The catch
- The catch: The floor-to-ceiling windows are the draw, and the Bowery below them is loud. The two facts are not separable.
DUMBO, Brooklyn Bridge Park
1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge
€€€An eco-build in Brooklyn Bridge Park whose rooms and rooftop face the Manhattan skyline straight on.
- Walk to Times Square
- Not a walk: about an hour on foot over the bridge, or the A/C to High Street to Times Square
- Right for
- Anyone who wants to look at Manhattan rather than sleep inside it. The skyline-and-bridge view from the park side is the best any hotel in this city offers.
- Wrong for
- Wrong for: Anyone on a tight sightseeing schedule. Every plan starts with getting across the river.
- The catch
- The catch: DUMBO's restaurants thin out at night, and the ones that stay open know exactly what the neighbourhood costs.
Where not to book in New York
The mistake in New York is rarely the neighbourhood, it is the fee and the window. Most Manhattan hotels add a mandatory nightly destination or facilities charge of tens of dollars that appears at the desk, not in the headline rate, so a cheaper-looking hotel can cost more than the one you rejected. Ask before you book. Second, do not sleep facing Times Square or a main avenue unless you have confirmed the glazing: the room photographs never carry the noise. And third, be careful with hotels deep in the Financial District on a first visit. The weekend rates look excellent because the district empties, which is exactly what you will notice at dinner time.
When to book
New York prices move with the events calendar more than the season. The brutal weeks are the UN General Assembly in late September, marathon weekend in early November, and Thanksgiving through New Year, when everything doubles and the small boutiques vanish first. January and February are the honest bargain: cold, but the same rooms at their lowest of the year. For autumn trips book two to three months out; for the small hotels on this list, the Casablanca especially, earlier still, because four dozen rooms do not absorb demand.
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Photo credits (10)
Photos via Wikimedia Commons, used under their respective licences.
- The theatre marquees of West 42nd Street in Manhattan at night: Boston (talk) - CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
- Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan, a block from the West 41st Street hotels: Another Believer - CC BY-SA 3.0 · source
- Times Square in the Theatre District, the anchor the walking times on this page are measured to: dconvertini - CC BY-SA 2.0 · source
- Bethesda Fountain in Central Park, across the road from the Fifth Avenue hotels: Christian David - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
- Madison Square Park in NoMad, Manhattan: Jeffrey Zeldman - CC BY 2.0 · source
- Brownstones on the Upper West Side, the family neighbourhood by Central Park: Beyond My Ken - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
- Townhouses on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, the quiet end of downtown: Beyond My Ken - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
- A cast-iron facade on Greene Street in SoHo, the loft district the Mercer sits in: Frank Schulenburg - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
- Outdoor dining on St Marks Place in the East Village, near the Bowery: Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City - CC BY 2.0 · source
- The Manhattan Bridge framed between brick warehouses in DUMBO, Brooklyn: Kidfly182 - CC BY-SA 4.0 · source