I have just returned from spending three nights in the Hampton Inn and while the hotel is great for the price that you pay be very careful when it comes to your room. I booked a twin room through an internet website and even emailed the hotel to confirm that the room was indeed booked and that it would be kept for me as I was on a late flight into NYC. Upon arrival at the hotel I was told that I had booked a King room not a twin, even with the confirmation in hand the receptionist repeated the above. I was travelling with a friend and said that it was not possible to share a bed, the solution, and the only solution that I was given was a camp bed. Only the fact that it was now 10.30 pm and my chances of getting another hotel at the time were slim I would have walked out. I have emailed the Hilton Groups customer service department but have heard nothing, in fact one of the email addresses comes back as undeliverable. So in short. Make sure you have your booking reference with you and stand your ground, wish I had!

I had meetings at Pace University, and this was the closest Hilton family property. I was afraid of what I'd find when I booked a rate of $122 for a Sunday night, which is technically a business night. Granted, it was also superbowl evening, so there may have been fewer bookings in general. Anyway, after the typical harrowing ride from LGA, I was pretty pleasantly surprised. The hotel is pretty new, and the front desk guy was nice and helpful. Per the Manhattan norm, everything is small--lobby, front desk, lone elevator, hallways. Surprisingly, however, the room was pretty spacious, and the bathroom was just fine by NYC standards. The room offered normal Hampton bedding (ok, not great), a small desk, decent desk chair, great desk lamp, separate closet, and a flat screen TV mounted on the wall. Nothing fancy, but then again, it's a Hampton Inn. The hotel IS loud (below my window was, it seemed, a bus depot and bulldozer terminal), but the HVAC drowned out the noise well enough to sleep. The free breakfast was typical Hampton--fine, unpretentious--though the eating area was tee-niny. The area is pretty dead at night, but there were at least five restaurants open w/in a two block radius. Stellas was great. Oh, there's a v-e-r-y sparse, small workout room in the basement, but it was good enough for 30 minutes of cardio. All in all, for less than $150 in Manhattan, this is a great option.

I arrived at the hotel and waited 15 minutes for the front desk clerk to get off of the phone. I was patient, but that didn't seem to matter. He did ask if I was staying for business or pleasure, and I responded business. He then put me in room 103, which is literally in the basement. They call it the cellar, I call it lame. I did ask to be moved, but the guy at the front desk said there wasn't anything available until the next morning. So a little about the cellar - You can hear the ice machine running most of the night, you hear anyone purchasing from the vending machines, and you hear the cleaning people early in the morning. In addition, the person that sets-up the breakfast station for the morning crowd has to come down there to get ice, which sounds like a handful of quarters in a dryer - this happened around 4:30 or 5 a.m. In addition to the creep factor of staying in the basement and all of the noise, when I went to use my hairdryer in the morning, it was broken. I did call the front desk to ask for another, to which they replied, "We don't have portable hairdryers." At this point, I'd really had enough and asked for another room. They did give me another room, and I moved my stuff to the 9th floor. It seemed odd to me that a room was available at 8 a.m., but not the night before. So I didn't really believe the guy at the front desk from the night before. The new room had a lovely view, but it was definitely a smoker’s room, and had a stale smoke smell. The room was fine, and the morning staff was far more helpful. I wouldn't recommend staying in the Cellar, although the one redeeming quality was that it had a small patio. Unfortunately, when I was there it was about 17 degrees outside, and it was completely unusable. I’m not 100% sure why the guy who checked me in asked if I was there for business or pleasure, because he gave me the noisiest room in the place. I walked away believing he was simply a jerk. There are a lot of hotels in New York, and I’m stumped as to why this one gets such high marks. It makes leery of the reviews that people write, and I would recommend spending some time searching around before settling for this place.

I stayed one night on business. The room I had was on the 8th floor. It was clean and well appointed. The staff was excellent and offered to assist me before I had the chance to ask. Also, the breakfast buffet was more than adequate with a nice assortment of baked items, juices, yogurts, cereals, coffee, tea, and fruits. I would absolutely chose to stay there again.