We stayed in the hotel for 6 nights and apart from a bad experience on our first night (We were moved rooms immediately the next morning) we had no problems at all. The only thing that I would say was bad is the hotel is very dated. On the corridor of the first room we stayed in I was reminded strongly of the hotel in The Shining. Also the lifts are a little slow and rattly. However, the location is excellent and is literally 10 minutes walk from both Times Square and Central Park. It is also only about a 20 minute walk from 5th Avenue which was great for us as we were on a shopping holiday and it wasn't too far to lug our bags back to. The staff were very friendly, especially the cleaners and we were given the option of one of the hotels private cars for our return journey to the airport which I think was a great perk. I would recommend it, it's only basic but when you're in Manhattan you don't need to spend a lot of time in your hotel room. When you do there is a coffee machine in each room and free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel.

Our family went to NYC on December 23rd overnight and stayed at the Holiday Inn! The room was clean and a good size. The bathroom was little small but it was worth it to have the extra space in the room. We drove in from CT and used the parking at the hotel. It was $27.00 for 24 hours. That is very reasonable in NYC. The hotel is very close to Central Park West. We walked to 5th Avenue and Times Square. We didn't pay much for the hotel so it was a great value for what we got. However if I had to pay $300.00 or more I would probably stay closer to Time Square.

Once you got past reception the hotel was tired and the room very substandard. The double room was dark, The heating didn't work, the air con didn't work - there wasn't even a dial on the temperature setting - it had obviously gone missing ages before. The double bed had one bedside table and one bedside light - useless if two of you want to read in bed. The wardrobe had just 5 coathangers in total for two people. As there were two of us with 3 cases of clothes we had to live out of the suitcases.

The bathroom fan ran continuosly 24 hrs per day and as it was next to the bed the noise kept us awake.

On checking out we wanted to leave our cases at the hotel for 2 hours before our airport taxi arrived. A member of staff attempted to charge us $5 per case for the priviledge. Instead we just sat in reception with the cases rather than submit to a member of staff trying to operate his own profit making scam ( the charge was not Company policy), although a senior member of staff knew of the practice as we saw him tell the employee to return the cash when another guest complained.

From experience I expected far more from a Holiday Inn - this was the worst by far.

I wrote an e-mail of complaint on returning home but to no great surprise I received no reply.

AVOID

Only 2 blocks from central park, as well as the natural history museam and the pick up point for the open top tour bus, get the red bus not the yellow one, as the red one runs longer. It takes you to all the central stops for the statue of liberty, ellis island etc, wasnt impressed with the empire state building, a long wait just to look over the city. Clean hotel easy to find, restaurant on site and near by. Staff freindly, room service good to. Buy the city pass to see all the sites, you save a lot of money.