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Couples · October 20258/10
My wife and I decided to celebrate a wedding anniversary in NYC over a few days into the weekend. . We usually apply hotel rewards from Marriott or Amex’s Fine Hotels program, but for this weekend, I...My wife and I decided to celebrate a wedding anniversary in NYC over a few days into the weekend. . We usually apply hotel rewards from Marriott or Amex’s Fine Hotels program, but for this weekend, I explored some rewards under our Chase Sapphire card. One of the hotels recommended was the NH Collection New York Madison Avenue. While I was unfamiliar with the brand ( it is part of the Minor Hotels group), it had room options that I thought would work well for our getaway and the hotel was in a convenient location in NYC for walking to restaurants and other attractions.
We arrived by train and the hotel was an easy 20+ minute walk from Moynihan Station. It is located in the Murray Hill neighborhood on 38Th Street between Madison and Park Avenue. The hotel has a classic brick facade and a pleasant, modern decor in the lobby and bar area. It is adjacent to the Serafina restaurant which is used for its meal services. Our check-in and orientation to the property was flawless and we were happy to hear our room was ready early after traveling most of the morning. We also learned that the NH is the only US property at this time.
The room we selected was one of the Tower Suites on the 15th floor. The room was extremely spacious with one of the largest bathrooms I have seen outside of a resort with a nice view of the Empire State building. It also had a second powder room and two closets and the king bed and seating was all very comfortable. The one oddity was that there were no drinking glasses in the room. We had paper coffee cups, but for wine or drinking water, we had to request glasses from a housekeeper. We also found room service to be a bit slow when we ordered an extra blanket one day and a bucket of ice on another, each request taking nearly an hour to deliver each time.
Our stay included a few small perks, including ten percent off at the hotel bar on cocktails. The bar has live music on week nights and we heard a decent Latin jazz quartet, but the service from the waitress on duty was indifferent and lazy. The bar was not busy ( it was a Thursday). She took one drink order and never came back to the area we were seated in from the bar. As she was less than thirty feet away, I tried to get her attention several times, but she appeared to engaged with a man sitting at the end of the bar and basically stopped working to talk with him and coworkers. My wife grew frustrated and returned to our room, while I went and sat at the bar to order directly from the bartender. I could not confirm if the discount for hotel guests was ever applied.
Beyond that, the NH worked well for our stay. The location is ideal if you are dining or shopping in midtown, or want to walk north to Central Park, which is about 20 blocks. However, it was a substantive amount of reward points that would have translated into a per-night-rate you might find at most 5-star luxury brands, so there needs to be some improvement at this NH on the little things related to basic guest services. I was also surprised to find that the hotel provided a newspaper called The Epoch Times in the lobby with content that was overtly propagandist and biased politically.Show More
