Strictly from a tourist perspective, the most expensive location in the United States is New York City. Recently, it is sometimes hard to find a room in a Manhattan hotel, which costs less than $400 per night.
But those days seem to be over now. In the past year, two giant new budget hotels have added a total of 1,300 rooms (the right room, 1,300 rooms) to the city’s Midtown stock, where a clever visitor can take advantage of this sudden cheap space to cut the cost of New York accommodation.
The first hotel like this, Pod Times Square Hotel (400 W. 42d St.; 844/763-7668), is one of the chains, but by far the largest. Sometimes designing over 600 rooms can take up to 100 square feet, and the pods squeeze multiple rooms into rooms that are usually a single room in a standard hotel.
However, with a private bathroom, flat-screen TV, free Wi-Fi and a bed that fits in the small space (some rooms have twins and some have a bunk bed), the pod offers all the essentials for the earthy visitors to find you night-time sleep, but hardly any.
The price of pods is considered to be as high as $99 per night, although they usually range from $120 and above, which is a miraculous level for the Big Apple. Place? Two Long Avenue neighborhoods west of Times Square, the hometown of New York’s famous theaters.
Another budget giant in the city, Moxy NYC Times Square (485 Seventh Ave., 212/967-6699) has been around for nearly a year, and also measures 600 rooms, has several smaller peers in New York and elsewhere, and is six short blocks south of Times Square.
Its rooms (pictured above) are a little larger than the pods and tend to be more expensive, for example, for many nightly rooms, $139 to $169, and sometimes more. The powerful Marriott International is its owner, and there seems to be a brisk competition between the Moxy and the Pod.
Never say that there will never be good news for tourists to the Big Apple.