Yotel's Yobot -- $2 per bag.

We’ll never know the identity of the enterprising employee who cleared his throat, stared down a guest and was remunerated for carrying a bag. But by the 1820s tipping the porter, like signing the register, was a ritual at hotels in New York and other big American cities.

Blame it on the buildings. Carrying bags wasn’t a problem for guests staying at small, squat colonial inns and taverns. But hotel architecture changed in the 1790s, with the advent of full-fledged hotels with complicated floor plans, writes A.K. Sandoval-Strausz in Hotel, An American History, a fascinating look at the evolution of the hotel. (more…)

Ritz Carlton lobby -- closed temporarily by Hurricane Irene.

And a most unwelcome guest she is.

Flooding concerns in low-lying areas of Manhattan prompted several hotels at the island’s southern tip to close this weekend for city-mandated evacuation, including the Ritz Carlton New York Battery Park, the Andaz Wall Street, the New York Marriott Downtown and the tiny Wall Street Inn. And just like that, more than 1,000 hotel rooms dropped off the city’s radar.

Fortunately, no homeless guests have been reported. New York hotels are rarely at 100 per capacity in the waning days of August, particularly business hotels near Wall Street. The Andaz, Ritz Carlton and Marriott are affiliated with hotels uptown (phone calls to the Marriott Downtown were routed to the Marriott Marquis, the Times Square behemoth).

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What are the top treatment requests at spas? Forget reflexology and mud wraps. Swedish massages and basic facials, the spa world’s plain vanilla, rule. But that hasn’t stopped spas from dreaming up fresh ways to promote relaxation, wellness and repeat visits.

Five new treatments, three at spas easily reached from New York and none of them cheap, caught my eye during the International Spa Association’s annual visit to New York.

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Hudson's semi-automatic.

Semi-automatic? It’s a vending machine, not a weapon, and you can see this big, oddly futuristic contraption in the lobby at the Hudson here in New York as well as at the Mondrian South Beach and the Sanderson in London.

As anyone knows who’s ever craved a midnight Coke, vending machines are nothing new at hotels. But the semi-automatic, with its singular appearance and attention-grabbing offerings – 24-karat gold handcuffs, anyone? – is different. We road tested – and blogged about — the Hudson’s semi-automatic a while back, but eager to know more, we spoke with Kim Walker, senior vice-president for marketing at Morgans Hotel Group.

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The Barbizon today.

Update: On April 18, 2012, the Barbizon became an official New York City landmark — number 127 — following a decision by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

New York boasts no shortage of thriving historic hotels, from the Pierre and the Algonquin to the Waldorf=Astoria. But the casualties on the ghost list can be almost as noteworthy, even on occasion, newsworthy.

Consider the fabled Barbizon Hotel for Women. An up-market version of the Footlights Club in Stage Door, the city’s premiere single-sex hotel flourished through the mid 20^th century as the ultimate career girl sorority house where anxious parents parked white-gloved daughters aspiring to be models, actresses, writers and secretaries.

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Ace New York lobby.

Think Barneys, not Hudson News. The latest hotel shops qualify as stand-alone boutiques that reside in hotels almost coincidentally.  Curated down to the last Walker crisp or Haribo raspberry, the best are destinations in themselves. And with good reason.

The Standard Downtown in LA showcases creations by local designers, like a line of fragrances concocted by an Echo Park resident. “She came in and wanted to sell to us,” says Claire Darrow, Standard creative director. “That happens a lot in LA. There’s a lot of creative energy.” (more…)

The Nolitan lounge.

One day a parking lot, the next day a hotel. Okay, the Nolitan wasn’t built in a day. But after years when new hotels mostly grew out of old buildings, New York’s latest properties are rising from the ground up. Consider the Mondrian SoHo, Yotel Times Square, Dream Downtown and the James, to name a few.

The 55-room Nolitan, which opened this week, joins this group with one big difference. This is the first hotel in Nolita, the crunchy, east-of-SoHo neighborhood that nudges Chinatown and Little Italy (hence the North of Little Italy moniker).  (more…)

Hotel Chelsea lobby, July 2011.

Today we say good-bye to the fabled Hotel Chelsea, or at least the high-profile bohemian flophouse we knew. On July 31st, at the stroke of midnight, the hotel that housed Virgil Thomson, Sid Vicious and Viva closed its doors to overnight guests, and its future as a hotel is unclear.

It is believed the building has been sold to developer Joseph Chetrit, who numbers the newly stylish Empire Hotel among his properties. In recent weeks, word spread that the hotel would close for a year for deep-dish renovations, (more…)