Collective Retreats Governors Island — Hotel in New York

I should really start leaving reviews because I’ve been in the hotel business for almost 20 years and travel a lot. Nonetheless here is my first! ||I’ll give you the positives and the negatives, with a very honest opinion. ||Some of the negatives of Collective Governor’s Island are outside their control, others aren’t. ||I booked 2 tents for my wife’s birthday: one for us and one for our close friends. We stayed two nights… Friday to Sunday.||POSITIVES||- The views are incredible. Do yourself a favor and take in the late-night views. Nowhere else will you get this view of NYC, Jersey City, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Incredible. ||- The tents are spacious. We have done a bunch of TENTRR trips (RIP TENTRR) and the size of the Collective tents is awesome… So much room to move around, ample seating, etc.||- The beds are comfortable and they did a nice job making up the tent like a typical hotel service. ||- The bathrooms are also nicely appointed considering this is, at its core, camping. ||- Pickup was flawless. They were waiting for us as we were told and our guide Rihanna was very friendly.||- The food is hit or miss, but don’t miss the cheese platter and prawns. We ate two meals… the first night I had the lamb chops. I am a foodie: we eat out 3-4X a week and travel often. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality and preparation of the lamb. The cheese boards and prawns were amazing. We ordered many during our stay. The second night I had the whole fish for two. It was decent at best. Lacked flavor and buried in tomatoes. Just a bit more caper and salt and some more crisp on the skin and it would have been perfect. || - Governor’s island is beautiful. Take a walk around the loop if you stay.||- The proximity to the island’s spa is wonderful. We got day passes and spent 5 hours on Saturday. I’d review the spa separately… it was nice but very overcrowded in the afternoon and food was bland. |||NEGATIVES:|- I arrived to the room and found ear plugs on the nightstand. I thought this strange given the location. When it came time to sleep I realized why…. There is a party boat that passes by every 45 minutes or so until 2AM and OH MY GOD… the ear plugs are useless. It’s like having a subwoofer under your bed. I can guarantee this barge is pumping at 10X the legal decibel level for after 11pm. But who do you even call about this? The police, the coast guard? So you can forget a peaceful night’s sleep if you come over the weekend. Of course, this isn’t Collective’s fault but you should be aware. The City should do something about this boat. It’s ridiculous. ||- Similarly, the tourist helicopters around New York are the rats of the air. Dozens of them flying low overhead literally all day long. The city should crack down on these invasive machines. Not only are they dangerous, but they’re insanely noisy. We were really fed up with them very quickly. Again, not Collective’s fault but you should be aware that this will not be a peaceful place to relax. Most of the day you might as well be trying to relax on a runway at JFK.||- This place needs an investment and better oversight of its facilities. Lots of things are worn out or flat out broken. ||- They need to put some money into landscaping… better maintenance of the beautiful grounds, replace broken things in the tents, etc. You can tell they pretty much built it and that was that.|Hotels need an SOP maintenance program or they will fall apart. I realize that doing this is difficult on an island, but if you’re going to advertise an elevated experience, you have to figure it out. ||- No hot water to be found in the showers during my stay. That sucked.||- Staff doesn’t do a good job cleaning up behind the guests. There were very few people here during our stay and I watched dishes and empty glasses piling up on tables. This attracts flies, bees, ants and rats. On our last morning I went to sit near the restaurant to enjoy a coffee only to find a plate left out the night before covered in ants. All they had to do was pick up that plate the night before. This comes down to poor management and oversight of staff. ||- They need a lot more sun protection around the grounds. There are only 3 umbrellas and one was broken. This left guests scrambling for a shady spot. |||All in all, this is the only glamping experience in a location with such proximity to NYC. But it’s a one and done experience. I doubt they have much repeat business, which is a shame. And unfortunately even if they put the money and oversight into improving things, I’d never come back on a weekend… The constant noise of the helicopters and insane party boat in the middle of the night that turns your tent into a Miami night club completely destroy the point of being here. ||- Breakfast you’ll get a yogurt and an apple. There is no lunch (we are at the spa) so you’ll need to hope there are food trucks on the island or you’ll literally be skipping lunch. ||My advice… try it once, two nights max, and...

I should really start leaving reviews because I’ve been in the hotel business for almost 20 years and travel a lot. Nonetheless here is my first! ||I’ll give you the positives and the negatives, with a very honest opinion. ||Some of the negatives of Collective Governor’s Island are outside their control, others aren’t. ||I booked 2 tents for my wife’s birthday: one for us and one for our close friends. We stayed two nights… Friday to Sunday.||POSITIVES||- The views are incredible. Do yourself a favor and take in the late-night views. Nowhere else will you get this view of NYC, Jersey City, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Incredible. ||- The tents are spacious. We have done a bunch of TENTRR trips (RIP TENTRR) and the size of the Collective tents is awesome… So much room to move around, ample seating, etc.||- The beds are comfortable and they did a nice job making up the tent like a typical hotel service. ||- The bathrooms are also nicely appointed considering this is, at its core, camping. ||- Pickup was flawless. They were waiting for us as we were told and our guide Rihanna was very friendly.||- The food is hit or miss, but don’t miss the cheese platter and prawns. We ate two meals… the first night I had the lamb chops. I am a foodie: we eat out 3-4X a week and travel often. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality and preparation of the lamb. The cheese boards and prawns were amazing. We ordered many during our stay. The second night I had the whole fish for two. It was decent at best. Lacked flavor and buried in tomatoes. Just a bit more caper and salt and some more crisp on the skin and it would have been perfect. || - Governor’s island is beautiful. Take a walk around the loop if you stay.||- The proximity to the island’s spa is wonderful. We got day passes and spent 5 hours on Saturday. I’d review the spa separately… it was nice but very overcrowded in the afternoon and food was bland. |||NEGATIVES:|- I arrived to the room and found ear plugs on the nightstand. I thought this strange given the location. When it came time to sleep I realized why…. There is a party boat that passes by every 45 minutes or so until 2AM and OH MY GOD… the ear plugs are useless. It’s like having a subwoofer under your bed. I can guarantee this barge is pumping at 10X the legal decibel level for after 11pm. But who do you even call about this? The police, the coast guard? So you can forget a peaceful night’s sleep if you come over the weekend. Of course, this isn’t Collective’s fault but you should be aware. The City should do something about this boat. It’s ridiculous. ||- Similarly, the tourist helicopters around New York are the rats of the air. Dozens of them flying low overhead literally all day long. The city should crack down on these invasive machines. Not only are they dangerous, but they’re insanely noisy. We were really fed up with them very quickly. Again, not Collective’s fault but you should be aware that this will not be a peaceful place to relax. Most of the day you might as well be trying to relax on a runway at JFK.||- This place needs an investment and better oversight of its facilities. Lots of things are worn out or flat out broken. ||- They need to put some money into landscaping… better maintenance of the beautiful grounds, replace broken things in the tents, etc. You can tell they pretty much built it and that was that.|Hotels need an SOP maintenance program or they will fall apart. I realize that doing this is difficult on an island, but if you’re going to advertise an elevated experience, you have to figure it out. ||- No hot water to be found in the showers during my stay. That sucked.||- Staff doesn’t do a good job cleaning up behind the guests. There were very few people here during our stay and I watched dishes and empty glasses piling up on tables. This attracts flies, bees, ants and rats. On our last morning I went to sit near the restaurant to enjoy a coffee only to find a plate left out the night before covered in ants. All they had to do was pick up that plate the night before. This comes down to poor management and oversight of staff. ||- They need a lot more sun protection around the grounds. There are only 3 umbrellas and one was broken. This left guests scrambling for a shady spot. |||All in all, this is the only glamping experience in a location with such proximity to NYC. But it’s a one and done experience. I doubt they have much repeat business, which is a shame. And unfortunately even if they put the money and oversight into improving things, I’d never come back on a weekend… The constant noise of the helicopters and insane party boat in the middle of the night that turns your tent into a Miami night club completely destroy the point of being here. ||- Breakfast you’ll get a yogurt and an apple. There is no lunch (we are at the spa) so you’ll need to hope there are food trucks on the island or you’ll literally be skipping lunch. ||My advice… try it once, two nights max, and...

This past Monday I stayed at the collective retreat on Governors Island. Upon checking in I was pleasantly surprised with how beautiful the location was - between the view of New York City and the waterfront.

But the cracks began to quickly show, the staff are clearly very new and have had very little training for a 5 star experience. The staff member who showed us to our tent did not even know where the tent was and was checking each tent to see if it was number 10. I gave him the benefit of the doubt that it is the start of the season, but shouldn’t staff be trained prior to the season opening?

We didn’t even get informed of the location of the toilets, or how to contact a member of staff. Later we found out this was available via the QR code email we were asked to scan at reception, however, no staff member made that clear. In addition, we were shown the ice storage in the room, but weren’t told who to ask or how to get ice. This was also the case for the complimentary coffee and tea. We saw this is the room, but we’re not told how to get water for this. There were two complimentary bottles of water in the room, but surely that’s not enough water for guests to drink AND make morning coffee/tea with. Lastly, there were no creamers in the tent. Instead, there were four empty creamer containers that had been used by a previous guest in the jar with half opened sugar.

In regards to dinner, no one seemed to have any clue about our reservation. Tables weren’t set and the guests were crammed into one side of the restaurant tent. Considering I had pre-booked a table, I was confused at this. None of the staff even seemed aware of the reservation list and when we asked to be seated, the staff seemed lost and confused. We ordered the Argentinian grill menu. Our server tried her best, but brought out the wrong food. She brought us chicken when we ordered beef then said “you’ll have to wait if you don’t want the chicken.” We proceeded to wait since we did not want nor did we order the chicken. In addition, the food was cold and bland. I explained the carrots were cold to our server and she said the kitchen would reheat them for us. This is an extremely odd response. It was not our fault that the carrots were cold, why should we have to now eat reheated carrots. Shouldn’t these have been prepared freshly again for the price of 95 dollars each guest. The grill menu itself was very poor and I will certainly not recommend it. The beef was tough (and cold… when it should’ve came straight off the grill), and the salad lacked flavour. We had one mini sliced potato between both of us.

Not one person correctly poured our water without spills going all over the table. To top it off, after spilling it, no one even came to clean it up! This is not a five star experience. We also got given 3 different cocktail menus throughout the night that I didn’t even know which one was correct by the end! And when we did order some cocktails, they were missing ingredients (e.g., espresso beans) because they weren’t “in stock yet.”

Then, we moved on to s’mores when a member of staff was shouting at the table next to us “there is not any fire service on this island so you should put the wood down or we else we will all burn down before the fire department gets here.” Why would a member of staff even say that to guests? I was honestly quite horrified.

The card we received on check in stated breakfast was 7am - 9.30am. However, we were not told what, If anything, we had to do to receive it. I left the tent at 7.30 and spent around 10 minutes searching for a member of staff to ask for breakfast and some water, to which she replied, “uh one second let me get Josh?” Then, she disappeared. Again, we were left to our own devices.

The overall experience didn’t match the quality of service we received. We were forgotten about and not looked after like the ‘retreat’ I had in mind. Everything I had been sold online and in emails seemed false...