When hotel historians – hey, they’re out there somewhere — look back on 2012, they’ll say what we already know: it was, for the most part, a very good year.

Bookish: the NoMad library.

New York City boasts 91,500 hotel rooms – up from 90,000 in 2011. Put another way, 29 million hotel room nights were sold in New York City in 2012.

Manhattan’s newest hotels were among its cleverest (cheers to the NoMad, Conrad New York, Pod 39 and TRYP New York Times Square South). And hotels you’d actually want to visit are popping up in the outer boroughs – even Staten Island – with Brooklyn (and the hipster Wythe) leading the charge.

No one will say 2012 was always easy. Killer hurricanes that flood lobbies, kill the lights and uproot guests when nearby building cranes become unhinged don’t blow in every year (we hope).  But as we slip into 2013, for most hotels – and current guests — Sandy is mere memory.

Here is our second annual list of what struck us as the best of the new. (more…)

Zero-proof raspberry lemonade.

Yuzu-Raspberry Thyme Sparkling Lemonade is this weekend’s drink. It’s a sweet/tart mash-up that’s tasty and alcohol-free, but first an explainer.

Not so long ago an intriguing zero-proof drink was as likely to be served at a hotel bar as a hot fudge sundae. We know. We drank a lot of Shirley Temples when we were pregnant.

But increasingly alcohol-free drinks have leapt past snoozey staples like ginger ale and club soda with lime and muscled onto the cocktail menu brandishing A-list ingredients, stylish glassware and, no surprise, champagne prices (hold the champagne).

Not everyone wants to drink alcohol at a bar or with a meal, especially lunch, says Joe Jackson, corporate director food and beverage at Hyatt. “We try to have at least three zero-proof drinks each season.”

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Healthy and sustainably sourced, too.

Hotels like to advertise that they offer all the comforts of home, only better. So why is it so hard to find healthy items like cage-free eggs, low-fat milk and grass-fed beef in the restaurants of most large full-service hotels?

Hyatt Hotels aims to change that and lots more. This week the company unveiled Food. Thoughtfully Sourced. Carefully Served, a soup to nuts food philosophy that in essence overhauls the entire food and beverage service for all Hyatt full service brands. The triple-tined aim is

to serve food that is locally sourced, harvested from sustainable sources and healthy to boot.

As you know if you’ve visited the restaurants at Hyatt’s New York City properties including the Grand Hyatt, healthy, locally sourced offerings have nibbled their way onto the menus – and into Hyatt culture — for a while. (The Andaz Wall Street even hosts a twice-weekly farmers market during warm months.) (more…)

Funny how something that seems so out of place in February or April looks utterly perfect in December and early January. We’re talking trees, of course – Christmas, holiday, whatever you may call them. And they’re lighting up hotels all around town. We found a dozen we love, each with a distinct style. That big tree at Rockefeller Center isn’t the only game in town! (more…)

The 2011 holiday tree.

Last year the Grand Hyatt New York, in the throes of a massive renovation, strung holiday lights from the construction scaffolding. This year the scaffolding is history, and a towering Christmas tree constructed from glass balls brings on the cheer.

A $130 million renovation is worth cheering – in part because it’s finished (the work unfolded in phases over three years). But the changes are smart, embracing nearly every inch of this midtown behemoth. “We’ve modernized,” said Mark Pardue, general manager, at a party celebrating the new building.

What they really did was de-Trump the place. (more…)

The Algonquin.

Historic hotels have their charms – the evocative architecture, the whiff of time travel, the (often) dazzling out-of-the-past guests lists. But there’s nothing charming about historic plumbing, which could be one reason the Algonquin, New York’s oldest operating hotel, is closing for four months of renovations beginning on January 1, 2012.

The news, reported in USA Today, seems a blend of surprise and what-took-them-so-long. The hotel, called the Puritan when it opened in 1902, oozes history in all the right places, namely the cozy/urbane wood-paneled lobby that still reels in an intriguing crowd, and the tile-floored Blue Bar, which opened the day Prohibition was repealed. (more…)

The Suite Spa Cart.

The new Hyatt 48Lex is a small, upscale hotel that offers guests everything you’d expect, from a restaurant and room service to a well-equipped fitness center – everything, that is, except a spa. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get a hot stone massage or an herbal facial without leaving the premises.

48Lex is the latest in a small contingent of hotels, including the Andaz Wall Street and the Grand Hyatt, offering the Cart – a spa on wheels outfitted with the basics a therapist needs to administer spa treatments in a hotel room.

The Cart looks like a rolling room service table, but instead of Eggs Benedict under a silver dome look for a facial steamer, magnifying lamp and towel warmer, a warming shelf for heating stones or wraps, (more…)

That much-discussed Yobot robotic arm that grabs and stores your luggage at the soon-to-open Yotel Times Square got us thinking about other nifty labor saving devices – as in the saving of the hotel staff’s labor – around town. We visited three hotels with clever do-it-yourself amenities, read the instructions and pushed the appropriate buttons. How did we fare? (more…)

The "new" hotel entrance.

We’ve followed the Grand Hyatt’s three-year march into the 21^st century since it began, and after what we saw on a recent visit it’s official – the glass and metal behemoth nudging Grand Central Station is edging closer to the finish line, shedding the last vestiges of shoulder pads, Dynasty and other creaky 80s trappings.

The lobby is the latest work in progress and at present it’s not pretty. (more…)