The room prices increased significantly since my last stay here in 2023 and the hotel experience was less positive.
Benefits include the location: 20 minutes or less to multiple subway stations, Barclay center, shopping, and restaurants. The hotel provided us water bottles whenever we asked.
However, I can no longer recommend this hotel due to safety concerns. There are "long-term residents" (i,e, migrants or unhoused people) staying at this hotel in a program coordinated by the city of New York. Three times during our six-night stay, I encountered belligerent "long-term residents" in the lobby or elevator. When I mentioned these encounters, the hotel staff stated that they do have "some long-term residents," but their only solution for my safety concern was to move me to another room. (I restated that my encounters were in the lobby and elevator, not my particular floor.) Seems to me that "long-term residents" should be housed in hotels that can accommodate their mental health needs and needs for in-room cooking and on-site laundry instead of a hotel that caters to mid-range travelers.
Other tips: There are two sets of elevators, make sure you ask which ones go to your room. There is a very basic breakfast in the lobby with coffee, yogurt, waffles, eggs, bananas, and so forth each morning. It gets crowded quickly. So, arrive early.
Don't try to eat that the hotel's restaurant, each time we went, there was only one person to be the bartender and the waiter. Instead, walk down the street to Junior's Restaurant or DeKalb Food Hall.
