PUBLIC Hotel — Hotel in New York

I wish I could give 0 stars. Worst hotel experience in my life, and I'm including $2 hostels around the globe. The Public needs to decide whether it's a nightclub or a hotel, but it can't be the latter while it's trying to be the former. ||||The offenses started the second we walked into the lobby to discover a dystopian bank of unmanned iPads in place of a front desk and human employees. The message is clear from the jump: the Public does not care about hospitality; it cares about profit. ||||(Honestly the issues had really started before we arrived as I had called the week before to request an early check-in and spoke with someone who said she was putting a note in my file to try to get me a room around 1pm, but who then suggested I should try calling the hotel directly to make sure. I said, I thought that's what I did and requested the direct line and the number she gave me was in fact the number I had called. When I pointed that out she stuttered and said, oh well you should call during business hours when someone will be manning that line. I asked what the business hours were, she said 9 to 5, and I pointed out that it was 4:30. She was silent, basically acknowledging that someone at the hotel should have answered the number I called when I called. Someone was slacking. I should have canceled my reservation at that moment and booked elsewhere.) ||||Anyway, of course when I tried to check myself in (quite the indignity when paying $700/night!) the iPad made no mention of an early check-in. I had to wander around to find an employee to "help" but they offered no assistance, just that we could check in at 3pm. I was in town for the Brooklyn Half Marathon and needed to go across the river to pick up my race packet which was the whole reason I requested the early check-in, so now my ability to do that was in jeopardy despite me trying to plan ahead. That same unhelpful and dour employee said we could store our bags - read that the way I wrote it: he said we could store our bags. He didn't offer to store them. He pointed us to self-serve pay lockers on the second floor. Again, the Public does not do hospitality, it does shake downs of all its misguided guests. ||||So we lugged our luggage up to the second floor where we found all of the lockers full. We wandered around and found another glum employee who said, there's more lockers in the basement. So we dragged our stuff two flights down to a very dark and creepy basement, the kind of space I would not have felt comfortable alone as a small woman. And those lockers were all full too. We schlepped back up to the second floor where at least there were places to sit. Finally, as my bpm and blood pressure spiked, a moderately helpful person appeared and offered to actually store our bags in a closet. Why no one else offered this in the half hour we'd been getting our steps in up and down and around this unwelcoming place I do not know but we gave him the bags and went out to do some necessary pre-race grocery shopping. ||||At 3pm we went back to the iPad kiosk Brave New World lobby and I checked in and printed my own keycards which truly felt so insulting. Again for $700/night on my day off I was basically manning office supplies with absolutely no customer service. We got up to our room on the 4th floor directly over the front door and it was exceedingly meh. All of the decor at the Public is outdated and cheap looking, neon lights and fake-luxe. We had to ditch our stuff quickly and run to grab a train to Brooklyn to get my race bib before the expo closed and then to make a 5pm dinner reservation. (Early pre-race dinner before a 4:30am wake up.)||||Back at the hotel we wound down and I tried to get to sleep early but was woken up shortly after midnight by people yelling in the hallway. And here is where the real nightmare of Club Public starts. Long and irate story short: I didn't get back to sleep until close to 3am for a grand total of around three hours of sleep the night before a race. Spoiler alert: I ran and felt like garbage.||||Now awake I noticed there was EDM music playing quite loud under us. I tried to get back to sleep but the music started getting louder and every 30 seconds or so wasted people would scream and shriek. When we checked in I'd gotten a text instructing me to text that number should we need anything during our stay because, ya know, no front desk. I think this is all by design because the Public is actually in the nightclub business and does not want its abused guests to have any way to actually complain. ||||I texted the number about the music and someone responded that it was street noise and they couldn't do anything about it. So now I was awake in the middle of the night, four hours before my alarm would go, with bass blasting in my room, and being gaslit by the liar who was working the text disservice line. I used my awake time to scan the Public's social media and found that they had advertised a DJ that night, I looked at the DJ's social media and sound and yep, that was 1000000% what I was hearing. I responded to the texter that it was not street noise but the nightclub the hotel was operating under my bed. They spat back some unhelpful subtextual eff you bs and between that and the sleep deprivation the Karen ESQ. in me was triggered. For while I live in DC I am in fact a NY licensed attorney. ||||I scoured NYC and NYS' hotel duties of service regs and noise ordinances, downloaded a decibel reader, and began taking screenshots of the readings in our room which were well above the legal limit. I then cited those laws and regs and offered the texter screenshots of the noise violations and their disposition changed quickly. They sent an angry response about how the club was legal and had all its inspections or licenses or some nonsense. But miracle of miracles the music got quieter, because it was in the Public's power to turn it down and stop torturing people the whole time. ||||I got back to sleep but only for around 90 more minutes. The race was miserable and not that anyone cares (certainly not anyone at the Public, like pretty sure the iPads DGAF) but this was my first time getting to actually train for a race in years after a hip fracture, hip surgery, and nerve damage. And the Public Hotel ruined it. All the work I put in rebuilding thrown completely out the window because the Public...

Long Review My friend and I arrived at 4:45pm for the rooftop, we didn’t find anyone at the entrance by the parking lot, and realized they open at 5pm. We decided we’d go to the restaurant inside for dinner since the google hours said it was open. There was no one by the hostess stand and a nearby bartender informed us the restaurant opens at 6pm. He was nice and accommodating (mentioned the bar offerings,etc) but we decided to wait for the rooftop instead so we could grab a drink up there. Around 5-5:03pm, we returned to the outdoor rooftop entrance and found no one. A guest who was heading to her car in the lot let us know she saw signage for rooftop entrance being put up inside the lobby. We went back in and asked 2 men who appeared to work for the hotel for guidance. One of them began to say “at 5pm, there would be a rope by the elevators” but the other man corrected him and said 5:15pm since it was already past 5pm. We thanked them and patiently waited again in the lobby. At 5:15pm we made our way to the second floor as instructed and followed signs for the elevators.. we found the “bouncer” (without the ropes it was hard to tell). We had our IDs ready but before we presented them, he mentioned we wouldn’t be able to go up if an ID wasn’t presented, it was no problem, we had them and showed them. He got in the elevator and took us up to the “rooftop”. Once we arrived, he kindly guided us to the hostess for further instructions/guidance. The hostess was sweet and let us know what was in scope, i.e. no seating available for the outdoor part but drinks can be purchased at the indoor bar and brought outside to take in the views. Not ideal, but we made it this far and didn’t complain. She asked to check our bags, I realized I had no pockets for any cards.. and asked if they take apple pay at the bar. She said yes and gave us our ticket for the backpacks my friend and I checked in. We made our way to the indoor bar.. which looks nothing like the outside (to put it nicely I wouldn’t have wasted a second to come there for it).. but bougie preferences aside, we stuck it out with class and kindness. The people at the bar said hello and quickly gave us a drink menu.. nothing in there was really standing out but we decided on some stuff and started to order. The lady bartender stated the lobster app was not available because the menu was printed and put out too early and they will not be serving that for a couple weeks..(we said ok and moved on). She kept recommending the happy hour drinks ,which we didn’t see initially and honestly weren’t into, we were looking for high quality cocktail options .. She politely answered our questions about their offerings and gave us a few minutes to decide but the happy hour menu had nothing I wanted (i.e. rosé or caipirinah). After a few minutes, we finally settled on drinks and as we started to order with the short male bartender who seemed impatient, he took our order and then asked for our IDs (weird order). We mentioned they were in our bags which we checked with the hostess out front and had our IDs checked before the bouncer brought us up. The bartender acknowledged nothing we said to him and instead responded with “it’s company policy” and he would have to go check with the lady bartender… we started getting ready to go get our IDs from the closet the hostess placed them in but the bartenders came back to us in a confrontational manner and weren’t allowing us to clarify.. we couldn’t even get a word in. As we finally started to speak, she impatiently and loudly asked “Well, where are your bags!?”. At this point, I didn’t even want to breathe the air from this place. With the last ounce of class in me, I politely indicated to my friend I was ready to leave, as they were still talking our heads off. We retrieved our bags and left. I chose this place to discuss hosting a bachelorette event there with my friend who is my maid of honor, but am very glad to have witnessed the utter lack of organization, professionalism, and business etiquette from...

Our stay at Public Hotel was a complete disappointment from the moment we arrived. We booked and prepaid for a three-night stay via Agoda, but upon check-in, the hotel’s system failed to locate our booking. A staff member eventually confirmed our 3-nights reservation, but things only got worse the next day.

While we were out sightseeing, we received a call from Dean, who claimed our reservation was only for one night and that we needed to check out. Despite repeatedly confirming that our Agoda booking was for three nights and fully prepaid, he refused to thoroughly investigate the issue or contact Agoda. Instead, he created a new booking without explaining what this meant. When I asked if we needed to change rooms or make additional payments, he impatiently mentioned we’d stay in the same room and demanded extra payment for two nights. I stated we wouldn’t pay again, as we had already settled the bill. Given that we were supposedly staying in the same room, this question felt like an implied threat that our belongings could be removed if we did not agree to additional payment. His attitude throughout the conversation was dismissive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable. When I pointed out his inappropriate behavior on the phone, he showed no remorse.

Since Dean refused to assist in resolving the issue, we had no choice but to make another international calls to Agoda at our own expense. Agoda immediately confirmed our three-night booking and attempted to contact the hotel’s reservation team, but after a long hold time, they were unable to reach anyone at the hotel and instead sent an email. When I called Dean back to update him, he was shockingly rude, asking why I was calling him again and claiming he had not received any email. Instead of taking any initiative to check with the reservations team. When I asked him to double-check the booking ID, he said “hold on one sec,” after which the call was abruptly disconnected. He never called me back. At this point, three hours of our day had been wasted, our holiday mood was completely ruined, and we had incurred unnecessary expensive international calling charges, all due to Dean’s lack of professionalism and unwillingness to help.

After hours of frustration, Agoda confirmed that the issue stemmed from a system error on the hotel’s end. Despite this, Dean never called back to inform us that the problem had been resolved, even though he said he would update us. Given the distress he caused, this was the absolute least he could have done.

That night, we spoke to Nate and the night manager, who were more helpful and at least listened to our concerns. However, we were required to pay a second deposit because the original one had been released, and as of today, our initial $200 deposit has not been refunded to our account. As a “gesture of goodwill,” we were offered a same-category room upgrade with a better view for the final night and a $100 food and beverage credit. Multiple staff members also mentioned that the “all-access” fee was waived, but this fee was already included in what we paid per our booking details. While we acknowledge the attempt at compensation, these gestures fall far short of compensating for the distress, wasted time, and financial impact this incident caused to our trip. Despite raising this concern that evening, no further compensation was offered. Had we known an entire day would be lost to dealing with this, we could have booked one less night.

Additionally, our TV was broken upon arrival, and no engineers were available to fix it. While I understand that late-night repairs might not be possible, this issue should have been flagged before check-in.

This has been by far the worst hotel experience we’ve ever had. While system errors happen, the lack of professionalism and accountability in handling this situation was completely unacceptable. I have already emailed Pierre and provided all booking details, hope that the management team will address this matter with the seriousness...