Good rooms in a good area for a good price.
The room I got looked exactly like the photo, though my room did not have a safe. Make sure you look closely and are fine with things like no television, no place to sit in the room aside from the bed, and a shared bathroom&shower.
The Pros:
The Location - This place is a short walk away from some great locations. There is a 7-11 directly next door and this can both a gift and a curse as I will explain under the “cons” list below.
The Staff - I didn’t get to meet the owner but the staff were very warm and friendly. Everyone from the guy at the desk to the cleaning woman were top notch and always available.
The Value - if you’re just looking for a place to hang your hat at the end of the night while traveling this is a great place at a great price. It’s right next to penn station, you can’t beat it.
The Cons:
Location - like I mentioned, this place is next door to a 7-11. If you plan on leaving anytime after dark, you will have to go in and out next to a group of… homeless? I don’t know their specific living situations, and in my experience they were all actually really nice — though I wouldn’t have let my wife go downstairs alone after dark if she’d come on this trip. The folks I met when going downstairs for a cigarette were polite, not pushy, and mostly minded their business - though I don’t know who you might meet, how drunk they might be, or how they might react when you tell them you don’t have any change.
I don’t fault the owners for this, there is little they can do as this is a free country and there is a store directly next door/under you — but it is what it is, and I would accompany anyone that wanted to leave after dark.
The Meat Clause - In truly bizarre eccentric NYC fashion there is a clause in the rental agreement asking you not to bring meat onto the premises. They are a vegetarian establishment, and think it’s important enough to maybe throw you out over — but not important enough to put in the listing so customers can make an informed decision before being surprised with this during check-in.
I like to play devils advocate, so I thought deeply on this one for a few days. I can definitely understand a vegetarian owners position of discovering rooms smelling like BBQ or steaks on checkout and feeling sick to your stomach over it — but at the same time, that’s what the customer is paying you for. They’re paying for use of the room, so it isn’t yours anymore, it’s why you’re being compensated. Where is the limit on this? If the owner only likes a certain ethnicity of women would that be the only kind I could bring to my room? Why should the owners preferences matter to me one bit? They absolutely don’t and it’s a totally bizarre request. Of course you aren’t going to like the smells people leave, but it’s why you’re compensated for crying out loud. This situation reeks of “I inherited a hotel and I’ll do whatever I please”, regardless of if it makes sense for any sort of business, let alone hospitality.
I’ve had a fairly good experience with Airbnb as far as “what the listing says is exactly what you get” until now. This room has me wondering if I should message the next host I book and ask if there is anything bizarre they leave out of the listing.
The owner was on vacation when so visited so I didn’t get to ask him about this — which is probably good as a few other reviewers mentioned he sometimes gets into shouting matches with customers and as a native New Yorker I likely would have shouted back and likely gotten kicked out.
Never in all my days have I had a hospitality owner tell me what I could eat on premise, totally bizarre and I can’t believe no other reviewer had mentioned it. I didn’t deduct many stars for this but I just can’t get over how strange it is.