A last look at the old sign.

Anyone who has seen the movie Taxi Driver knows that Times Square wasn’t always a desirable location for a hotel. But that was a long time ago. Now even hotels that aren’t all that close to Times Square are adding the spot-where-the-New-Year’s-Eve-ball-drops to their name.

The latest Times Square pretender is the Sheraton New York Hotel, which today augmented its name to become the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel – even though the hotel is ten blocks north of the Times Square’s throbbing heart, where Broadway, Seventh Avenue and 42^nd Street meet.

At least you can see Times Square from the Sheraton.  The same cannot be said for the TRYP New York Times Square South, which is a lot closer to Madison Square Garden and Penn Station than Times Square. (more…)

Cuisinart one-cup coffeemaker.

We love the sneak peek aspect of trade shows, so we beelined to the recent International Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Show at Javits Center. Seeing the panoply of items hotels can choose from prompts reactions from what took them so long to whatever were they thinking?

Here’s a sampling of what we saw – and what you’ll be seeing soon, if not already. To put it another way – expect a lot more square dinner plates, one-cup coffee makers and iPod/iPhone dock station alarm clocks.

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