Holiday Inn Midtown New York Has $70 Room Rates and It Doesn’t Even Look Like a Mistake

by Gary Leff

The Holiday Inn Midtown on West 57th has rates as low as $70 during the third week in January. Rates are otherwise under $100 into February. (HT: Shareholder)

It’s not just the Holiday Inn Midtown where prices are low, here’s The Hudson on the same night for $102 and the Park Lane for $159. And that’s not even looking very hard or for opaque rates.

You can do better on Hotwire of course and use the Better Bidding hotel list to decipher which hotel you’re getting in advance.

There’s been overbuilding in the New York city market. Business travel isn’t back in full swing yet, we aren’t talking peak season. The highest end hotels are still expensive but certain within the range of properties that are more or less interchangeable in the city there are some real deals compared to pricing in the recent past to be had.

I’m a bit jaundiced of course because I remember when you could Priceline the Grand Hyatt (admittedly, two renovations ago) for the high $70s. But that’s also when you could book the Le Meridien San Francisco (then a Park Hyatt) for the $40s, Priceline bookings counted towards elite status and were given status recognition, and people used to Priceline San Francisco hotels to live in as a way to save on rent in that city (and get daily housekeeping and lounge access).

So this isn’t exactly the bottom for the hotel industry that 2002 and 2009 were! The overall direction will be driven by the economy, but watch what happens to rates going forward because they’ll give us some idea of at least where regional economics are going.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Hyatt and Marriott hotels (but not the Starwood ones) have (or, at least until rather recently had) a policy of granting elite status stay benefits to their program elites even on “opaque” bookings. One of the great things about Hyatt and Marriott.

  3. This isn’t a mistake rate. My wife and I live in New York, and after seeing this low rate, we decided to have a staycation to meet the IHG accelerate promo. We stayed on January 1, and the stay came to $90 with taxes. Upon arrival, we saw a bunch of signs that said as of February 15, the hotel would be changing names/ownership. The hotel was clean but horribly outdated. My guess is that the low rates is an “everything must go” clearance sale before the hotel changes hands.

  4. @chelsea… I don’t understand the concept of a clearance sale before a rebrand. Did you take anything with you?

  5. Rates seem to be quite low in NYC this winter overall. Earlier this week I scored a $120/night prepaid weekend reservation at the Grand Hyatt for late February (it was $150/night on Orbitz and Hotels.com, and I managed to get Hyatt to approve a best rate guarantee, knocking it down 20% further).

  6. By clearance sale, I mean that if the hotel is sold already, and since January in NYC is the lowest tourist time in New York, it makes sense to have the lowest prices and just get whatever occupancy you can. There’s no need to keep the prices high enough to maintain an image of brand value.

  7. I considered this Hotel for a trip in August 2016 but read a lot of reviews about bad hygiene up to rats in the floors. So we stayed at the Holiday Inn Financial District, which is also very cheap, but has a very good standard.

Comments are closed.