By ANNE KADET
Quick: What’s the top-rated hotel in the city, as determined by the millions who post reviews on TripAdvisor? No, it’s not the Plaza, the Four Seasons or even the Mandarin Oriental. It’s the Hotel Casablanca. You know, the Hotel Casablanca in Times Square? The one with the free breakfast buffet (Rice Krispies! Hard-boiled eggs!) and the Early Moroccan Dentist Office décor? OK, I’d never heard of it either. Nevertheless, it’s a perennial favorite on the Web’s biggest travel-ratings site, with more than 1,500 guests granting it five stars. The ultra-luxury Setai Fifth Avenue is a distant runner-up.
Wesley BedrosianThe desk attendant refused to let me upstairs for a peek. ‘It is not safe,’ he said.
It’s one of those New York mysteries. Here we have some of the most exquisite, high-end properties on the planet, but the public goes ga-ga over a mid-priced, 48-room boutique with no doorman, no swimming pool, no spa, no restaurant and a lobby the size of a bodega. It’s hard to tell from the reviews what makes it so special. TripAdvisor generates lists of commonly used phrases for every property, and when folks rate the Hotel Casablanca, they write things like “very nice,” “rooms are clean” and “air conditioning.”
They are right. A visit last week revealed that the boutique’s $300 “cozy classic” room was clean indeed, even if it was too small to accommodate a dresser or a desk. There was an AC unit in the window. And everyone on the staff was very nice, including the attendants manning the free evening wine-and-cheese buffet in the spacious second-floor lounge. Still, how did this add up to, in the words of Robert M from Greensboro, N.C., a “Crown Jewel”?
My guess: Folks from out of town worry that a stay at anything less than the Plaza will land them in a hellhole where waiters spit in your food, the housekeeper steals your laptop and the ax murderer hiding under the bed leaps out to impose gay marriage and abortion on your unsuspecting children. Upon discovering a friendly, comfortable spot in Times Square that doesn’t charge extra for breakfast or wireless, visitors feel not just relief, but a sense of wonder and gratitude.
There is, indeed, cause for concern when booking a room in NYC. To get an idea of what tourists confront, I left the Casablanca and hopped a cab to one of the city’s worst-rated lodges, the Sun Bright Hotel on Hester Street, where I had booked a $95 room. The TripAdvisor reviews for this joint were intriguing, with naked guests roaming the halls, terrible odors and strange insects among the highlights. A Canadian critic remarked that it looked less like a hotel than “a prison, poultry farm or even a concentration camp.” Jeffrey H from Madison, Wis., warned, “Never come here. Seriously. I mean it.”
The lobby, located up a long flight of stairs, had the look and feel of a shabby government office. The young clerk behind the bullet-proof glass photocopied my ID and gave me the metal key to Room 114, a windowless, fluorescent-lit cell with just enough room for a small cot and a tiny, wall-mounted sink. The towels and sheets were stained. The cable service on the 12-inch TV featured six channels, two of them fuzz. The communal bathrooms were down the hall.
Out in the Sun Bright lobby, Tom Hedges, a fundraising consultant from London, was looking bemused. Upon check-in, he said, his first thought was: “Dear God, what have I let myself in for?” He was staying up on the fifth floor, where the “dorm-style” rooms consisted of tiny cubicles topped with chicken wire. “It has kind of an East Berlin-before-the-Wall-came-down kind of look,” he said.
The desk attendant refused to let me upstairs for a peek. “It is not safe,” he said. (The hotel did not return several requests for comment.) But Mr. Hedges had a brilliant plan: He distracted the clerk with a fake problem while I ran up the dark stairwell. I never made it to the fabled fifth floor; the entrance was locked. But what I saw on the other floors, which appeared to be some sort of rooming house for vagrants and vagabonds, was beyond description. All I can say is, people should not live like this. Mr. Hedges offered a brilliant one-word summary: “Terrifying.”
The next morning, over free eggs and coffee at the Hotel Casablanca, I met Kaila Horan, an Internet marketing manager from Jamestown, N.Y., who had an appreciation for the hotel that I now shared. She previously tried three of New York’s larger chain hotels, and said she always felt like she was imposing on the staff. “They were too busy to talk to me,” she said. At the Casablanca, “They’re happy to see you.”
Turns out, the place is one of four boutique hotels owned by Henry Kallan, an entrepreneur who came to New York from Czechoslovakia in 1968 and got his start working as a hotel busboy. His Casablanca, Library Hotel, Hotel Elysée and Hotel Giraffe are all in the TripAdvisor NYC top 10, and they all share the same basic formula.
Instead of devoting precious space to a restaurant, gym or additional guest rooms, Mr. Kallan’s hotels have big lounge areas offering free food and bevvies 24/7. For fried tourists tired of spending $8 on bad cappuccino every time they want a breather, this is heaven. The staff, selected for personality over experience, is constantly drilled in the fine art of looking a guest in the eye and inquiring after her comfort. The pièce de résistance? No pesky fees. Mr. Kallan says he doesn’t claim to run the best hotels in the city, but he delivers what he promises: “There are no surprises.”
Doesn’t sound like much, but in New York, decency and courtesy make a big impression—and allow for premium pricing. The average daily room rate at the Hotel Casablanca last year was $350, “which is unbelievable for a little hotel like this,” says Mr. Kallan. He’s right. According to real-estate services firm CBRE, the Manhattan average last year for other hotels in the Casablanca’s “limited service” category (think Hampton Inn) was just $232.
Of course, you could save a few bucks and stay at the Sun Bright. Just be sure to bring your own sheets. And towels. And mace.
—Ms. Kadet, who writes the “Tough Customer” column for SmartMoney magazine, can be reached at anne.kadetA version of this article appeared Mar. 24, 2012, on page A18 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Hospitality Highs and Lows.
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