Hotel Riu Plaza New York Times Square — Hotel in New York

Absolutely beautiful hotel and a great experience from check-in to check-out 👌🏻

The hotel is beautiful & literally a block away from the buzzing hub of New York's Times Square! The lobby is very stylish, the staff there are friendly, welcoming and very helpful 😊 any questions and requests were taken on immediately and resolved. Check-in was fast when we arrived in the evening, was outlined all of the terms of the room and the security deposit and was also given a copy for our own reference to read over during our stay. The only thing that wasn't explained was using the room card in the elevator to select our floor but thankfully another guest helped us when we got into the lift.

They have five elevators so you won't have to wait too long. The Deluxe family room we had was lovely! Two King/queen beds and a sofa bed. The bathroom was spotless, has all of the things you need and plenty of towels. The other accessories are disposable tie bags for women's personal hygiene items, powerful hair dryer and shower cap.

The shower is great as it has a standard shower head and the rain head(which was my favourite! Water only takes a few seconds to warm up and the turn taps were easy to use and adjust for the right temperature.

The beds were firm but so comfortable! When I got home after the trip I was unsatisfied with my own bed after 4 nights in the hotel 🤣 You get two pillows and it has a lower thin sheet for the warmer nights and a regular thickness duvet on top of its a little colder. The temperature was great when we were there, not too warm, the air con was good, would've liked it a little colder though as the lowest temp was 18°c which is a warm day in England 😅 we did opt to keep the window open at night though instead of using the air con which was enough to collect the room down and not too noisy with the regular sirens going on on typical New York fashion even though I wore ear plugs anyway.

The view from the hotel was really nice, big buildings in front and to the left you could see the Hudson River.

In the morning we'd go down for our included buffet breakfast which didn't disappoint at all! We went down between 7am & 8:30am, there was barely any waiting. One morning we went to Fashion(the hotels in-house bar and restaurant) for breakfast which definitely helps spread the mass of hungry folks starting their day. The selection of choices was brilliant from cereal, tons of pastries like pain au choc, croissants, bagels, a big fruit salad bar, warm breakfast like bacon, scrambled eggs, beans, fried tomatoes etc. You really are spoilt for choice at breakfast! If you go for waffles/pancakes there's also a hot maple syrup dispenser 🤤 and a tub of squeezy Hersey's chocolate syrup and toppings.

For drinks they have teas like English breakfast, Earl Grey and a fruit tea, they have both regular and decaf coffees too.

We'd come back to our room with freshly made beds and tidy rooms(not that we left it messy) but every day the cleaning staff did a great job keeping our room maintained for when we got back😊

I had issues with the WiFi, I set it up & changed the password but it still wouldn't connect, I gave up with it as I had unlimited abroad roaming data from O2 anyway.

The bar previously mentioned called Fashion was excellent at night time for dinner and drinks!

The whole experience with this hotel was brilliant, I've never stayed in a 4 star hotel before but to me, it was a 5 star experience from start to finish 😁 thank you to all of the staff for making our stay there as welcoming, helpful and stress free 🙏🏻 I appreciate everyone working there, you're...

I booked this place for the sole purpose of having an enchanting night out with the wife, away from kids and pets (family is taking care of them), in the heart of the city. For the exorbitant amount of $550, my expectations were simple. To be marginally better than a conventional hotel stay most people pay $100-150 for. Not a tall order in my opinion.

If you don't want to continue reading, it fell short terribly. See below for why

We checked in around 1650. The check-in process was smooth. They also upgraded our room to an executive suite which was an unexpected surprise because I booked this room on 21 July. We came to the room, excited for what this upgrade has to offer, and sadly, there was hardly anything you can consider an upgrade in the room. While we were waiting for an elevator to leave the hotel (15 minutes later), we ran into an old white couple who just exited an executive lounge, so we asked them about it. It turns out they were also upgraded to executive for free out of the blue and with it came access to this room, which is pretty sweet! We come back from our Broadway show (2230) and try the key but it doesn't work. I went downstairs to get some resolution and they said because they upgraded my room for free, it doesn't come with access to the executive lounge and it would be an additional $30. So the one redeeming factor to getting this style room is locked by a $30 fee? But when I spoke to the couple, they made no mention of paying for this access. As fate would have it, we ran into them again, and they confirmed they didn't pay for the additional benefit but still had access to the room. So now I have concerns since me and my wife are Spanish and this simply looks awful. My impression of this place plummeted to all time lows from here. I went to the front desk at approximately 2315 because they only left one towel in the room and the TV didn't work either. The guy at the front desk said room service and some tech guy would be there in 5-10 minutes. Room service showed up at 2357 and the tech guy showed up at 0910 the following morning, which I told him to work on after we checked out. This room clearly wasn't ready to accommodate 2 guests. The service for the TV and towel was inconvenient considering we had an early morning and waiting 40+ minutes cut into our sleep. I also shouldn't keep going downstairs (because the phone in the room doesn't work either), to get something this simple fixed. Now for breakfast, I had no complaints. They remained typical of most hotels that offer breakfast with your stay, nothing stuck out to me as above and beyond and the food was satisfactory.

Overall, for the amount spent, this has to be the worst hotel stay I've experienced in my lifetime. I couldn't wrap my head around getting a last minute change when I booked so far in advance, and the so called upgrade being locked by an additional $30 other tenants didn't pay to get the benefit. I believe most, if not all of this, would've been avoided if they gave me my original room in the first place, because the perception of discrimination is a hurdle no one should ever have to experience in modern times. I wouldn't recommend anyone come here if they care about their hard...

DON’T STAY HERE! This hotel has the WORST SERVICE!!! The staff were so unhelpful and very rude!! YOU CAN’T EVEN GET HOUSEKEEPING TO CHANGE THE BEDDING OR ALL THE TOWELS!! You don’t get BASIC amenities like ICE and have to ask the cafe that’s only open until 9:30PM. They have a mini fridge without a freezer. There isn’t a microwave in the ENTIRE building. The rooms are SMALL. THE WALLS ARE THIN AND YOU HEAR EVERYTHING. The rainfall shower head pressure is BAD. If you take a hot shower, droplets form on the ceiling and dripped to the floor for hours. The curtains DON’T block out light AT ALL. There’s 4 small Nightstand drawers if you expect drawers during your stay. You have to leave a key inserted in a designated slot by the door for the electricity and A/C to work BUT have to turn off each individual light to keep the A/C on WITHOUT removing the key. You also need to insert a key inside the elevator EVERY TIME you go up or down the elevator. There’s construction going on right near the hotel and you can hear it CLEARLY from even the 16th or 27th floor out of 28 floors. You can also hear the NY traffic from your room CLEARLY. Breakfast is from 7-10AM and the lines are super long from 9-10 am when most people would get up and eat.

Housekeeping WALKED IN on me many times and even in the shower. They REFUSED TO change my sheets after I requested it in the app and came back 6 hours later to find my sheets UNCHANGED. They pretended to do it by marking it resolved 40 mins later. When I saw this, I called 3 separate times to get them to actually change it and patiently waited in the lobby for 1 hour for them to complete it, but they just sent someone up with 1 flat sheet and told me to do it myself without providing a full set of sheets. The front desk was very rude and said I asked for it too late even though the app says it’s available 24 hours.

They CONTRADICT THEMSELVES REPEATEDLY. Their policy is housekeeping serviced DAILY but they made it a whole big ordeal and refused to do it. They said they don’t have housekeeping in the evening hours yet I saw a worker and we spoke briefly around 5PM. I called the front desk in the morning, and they confirmed that’s FALSE information and that the time I requested it, they had enough time to properly complete the request!! They lie and make excuses to fit their own agenda and make you feel like you’re the issue for requesting the very basic of needs that you PAY FOR at a hotel. They gave me a paper that said checkout is at 12PM but then try to kick you out earlier and say check out is at 11AM even though when I booked it stated 12PM.

I spoke to the manager, Jose Frias, in the morning and at first he seemed understanding on the phone saying this is unacceptable of the staff, but once I went down to check out, he did a whole 180, had an attitude, was very short with me, and tried to blame me saying that I requested housekeeping too late (which I didn’t and front desk confirmed I didn’t), and just wanted to blame me for his staff’s terrible service!! He was the worst, very accusatory, and a rude manager.

The hotel is 2-7 min walk to Times Square and Broadway BUT I’ll never stay again because of this horrible service and barely...