The newly named New York Hilton-Midtown.

Is the hottest New York hotel amenity a new name?

Consider: In recent months Stay morphed into Night Times Square (never mind that the original Night Hotel is just two blocks away). And the Sheraton New York Hotel & Tower changed its name to Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel (never mind that it’s not all that close to Times Square).

This week comes the news that the Hilton New York is now the New York Hilton-Midtown.

The new moniker marks a return to the name founder Conrad Hilton bestowed on his fledgling property in 1963 – New York Hilton Rockefeller Center, according to hotel general manager Mark Lauer. Only it’s not quite  because Rockefeller Center and Midtown, while close, aren’t precisely synonymous. (more…)

New version: Metropolitan Ballroom

Every city that’s home to an election-night political candidate, from mayor to POTUS, has at least one hotel you’ve seen a lot even if you’ve never been inside.

The Sheraton New York Times Square, to use its new if slightly off-base name, is one of those hotels – or to be specific, the second-floor Metropolitan Ballroom. In the hotel’s 51 years this 15,000-square-foot expanse, way larger than most Manhattan apartments and capable of packing in 1,500 people without creating a fire hazard, has hosted countless balloon-filled election nights replete with candidates triumphant or tearful (and their equally countless triumphant or tearful supporters). In short, the Metropolitan Ballroom is, in hotel terms, a media star. (more…)

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…)

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…)