Yahoo Lifestyle Wealthy Travelers in N.Y.C. Are Skipping Hotels and Staying at Luxe Apartments
As hotel rates in New York City surpass $1,000 per night, travelers have been getting creative when it comes to lodging.
Instead of splashing out cash for a high-end hotel room when visiting the Big Apple, more jet-setters are renting out entire apartments in Manhattan as an alternative, The New York Post reported. Two years ago, the city started cracking down on short-term rentals like Airbnbs, which has forced visitors to either stay at a hotel or put down roots. Now that nightly rates for these ritzy properties have skyrocketed, more people are leasing luxury units—even if it’s just for a few days.
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“Now, prices for hotels have gotten so crazy that to get a suite at one of the better hotels in the city is running north of $2,000 a night,” agent Abby Palanca of Serhant told the publication. To put things into perspective, a weekend in a suite at the Aman New York is currently going for $2,650 per night, while you could snag a room at the Surrey for $1,918 or the Plaza for $1,662. Plus, you’d need to factor in additional taxes in fees on top of that.
“Let’s say you have three kids and a nanny, that’s four hotel rooms, which makes it really uneconomical really quickly for a one-week stay,” added Jonah Hanig, the CEO of luxury rental marketplace Rove. “That’s $8,000 a night, when you could rent a four-bedroom luxury apartment for $30,000—the same cost as four nights in a hotel.”
As for what kind of properties are up for grabs, a couple recently rented a furnished, five-bedroom penthouse atop Trump Park Avenue, The New York Post reported. The unit was priced at $52,000 for the month and came with its own library, a wood-burning fireplace, and formal dining room. The reason for their visit? A two or three-day shopping trip on Fifth Avenue. Elsewhere, a deep-pocketed businessman flying in from Texas leases an apartment in Soho for $13,000 a month to avoid high hotel costs, even though he’s only there for three or four days a month.
The biggest reason for the shift in attitude among travelers, however, is the benefit of additional privacy that an apartment can provide over a hotel—especially if the guest is a person of prominence. “We get it all the time,” said Hanig. “An assistant calls and says, ‘so and so is looking. They need a drive-in, drive-out garage. They don’t want to walk through a lobby. They need to be able to accommodate security and their head of security needs to tour before they book.’” Hanig added that having a crash pad to call home also provides a sense of relief for clients staying in areas of the city that don’t have many five-star hotel options to begin with.
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