Lola -- the fragrance.

Can a perfume bottle inspire a hotel? The thought never occurred to us until we visited Lola, a sleek new hotel in an old brick and stone building in the East 20s. But oh, those colors. The moody/glam lobby – and guest rooms and website – are ablaze in purple, scarlet, navy and yellow. And so is Lola, the Marc Jacobs fragrance in the whimsical bottle crowned with a plastic flower.  Like the bottle, the hotel has style.

No one mentioned perfume when we asked how the hotel got its name, which it adopted on December 1. “Louise Brooks lived here at one time. Wasn’t she in a movie called Lola?” a staff member said. That was Lulu, but an intriguing connection nonetheless. (more…)

Chocolate cocktails sound pretty innocuous, but as we discovered on a recent visit to the lounge at the Pierre hotel, they’re oddly polarizing.

While keeping a friend company before she went to a dinner party upstairs, we spotted the bar’s Chocolate Cocktail Festival menu featuring eight drinks (five hot, three chilled) and two lavish desserts, $14 each. (more…)

In case you missed the Trump International New York Hotel & Tower’s starring role in the action comedy Tower Heist (and regret it), you’ve got another chance. The caper movie Rotten Tomatoes called “fun fluff” goes on sale on Blu-Ray and DVD on February 21^st.

Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Tea Leoni, Casey Affleck and Alan Alda co-star with the hotel,which is cast as a super-luxe condo packed with wealthy New Yorkers. Not much of an acting stretch for the Trump, in other words, but the hotel plays its part convincingly, even if all that’s seen is the gleaming black and gold exterior as well as the loading dock, garage and residential lobby at 1 Central Park West. (Sorry, no guest rooms.) (more…)

Spot Suite deck in action.

It’s serendipity that Fashion Week and the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show hit town at the same time this year. Show dogs are the canine version of supermodels. And like the leggy creatures strutting the catwalk at Lincoln Center, the furry creatures running the ring at Madison Square Garden, February 13 and 14, travel relentlessly.

“We’re in hotels 50 weeks a year,” says Debbie Kennedy, an owner of Wooly Bully, a personable, 26-pound French Bulldog who, at four, is a dog show veteran and winner of Best of Breed at Westminster in 2011.

On the other end of the leash Wooly Bully sniffed the bright green turf carpeting a deck at the Affinia Manhattan, a 1920s hotel that has the good fortune to stand across the street from Madison Square Garden. (more…)

Sometimes a hotel just gets lucky. For years Fashion Week unfurled in big white tents in Bryant Park across the street from the Bryant Park Hotel.  But in 2010, the big twice-yearly show moved to a sleek gray cube planted in Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park. And just like that, luck winked at the Empire Hotel, so close you can scamper from hotel to cube in stilettos.

This year the Empire went all out to celebrate Fashion Week, February 9^th to 15^th.  We stopped by to see what you can do without checking in or scoring an invitation to a private party. (more…)

Add the TV zapper to the list of hotel room amenities one step closer to the junk heap.

Last week LodgeNet, the largest provider of in-room entertainment, introduced a new app that lets hotel guests use their smartphones to operate the TV. The free LodgeNet Mobile App turns an iPhone, iPad or Android into a hotel room remote control that does it all –  turns the TV on and off, adjusts the sound and accesses free TV, on-demand TV and pay-per-view movies.  The app also serves up information about the hotel and local events, restaurants, maps and attractions. (more…)

Twice a year Restaurant Week muscles onto our dining radar with its vaunted three course fixed price lunches and dinners. Now in its 20^th year, the twice-yearly promotion timed to boost business during winter and summer slow spells attracts more than 300 restaurants including more than 30 in hotels.  This year’s first promotion, with $24.07 lunches and $35 dinners on weekdays, ends this Friday, February 10. (more…)

The ads! The half-time show! Madonna! We love football (Go Giants), but it’s not the only reason to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday.

Where do you want to be when the Giants and the Patriots go helmet to helmet? We suggest a hotel bar that’s geared up for the big showdown. We found six  – three in midtown and three downtown — where you can settle in with a pitcher of beer and a bucket of wings and drink in the early February festivities, be it the game, the sideshow or both, on a big screen (or two, or 17). (more…)

The Four Seasons.

Not long ago Trip Advisor posted its crowd-sourced list of the top hotels in the US. New York City fared badly with not one property in the top 25.

Another day, another survey. AAA has released its 2012 list of  Five Diamond hotels and restaurants, and New York City cleaned up with eight hotels and one hotel restaurant landing the coveted diamonds, the goldest star AAA’s professional raters award. Only Las Vegas scored higher in the hotel category, with a nod for ten properties. (more…)

Talk about a misnomer. Lady Mendl, aka Elsie de Wolfe, the pioneering interior designer and Age of Innocence-era grand dame, never lived in the twin 1834 townhouses containing the tea salon bearing her name. And we can’t imagine this crusading modernist who loathed Victorian frou frou would have selected, or condoned, the curvaceous loveseats, tufted brocades, fringed lampshades and acres of carved wood that fill the salon’s two parlors.

No matter. We can’t think of a better place to retreat when you want to take a quick break from the 21^st century. (more…)