The Standard, High Line — Hotel in New York

I rarely feel compelled to leave reviews, but I just checked out of the worst hotel experience of my life.||Our stay was for four nights from July 3rd to July 7th. I booked the hotel through American Express using my Platinum card. The Standard High Line is in their Hotel Collection.||Our flight was scheduled to land after Midnight, so I phoned the hotel to make sure they held our room. We landed at 12:45 am and arrived at the hotel at 1:30 am. We were given room 514. We started unpacking, and as we looked around the room, we saw the shabby condition of the room. The carpet was stained and tattered and furniture looked like it had been through hell. It’s the kind of room you might expect at a poorly rated motel. The carpet was so bad, we didn’t even want to walk on it with our bare feet.||I went downstairs, and the front desk attendant found another room for us. We moved to that room (510). It was warm, but we thought it was just because the AC had been turned off. We unpacked and went to bed. At this point, it was 2:45 am. The room never cooled down. We were sweaty and unable to sleep. July in NYC is hot. ||I went to the front desk the next morning and asked the front desk if they could check our AC. They said they would take care of it. We got back from being out and about around 3:00 pm. We noticed the roof was still warm, but thought it was just because it was so hot and humid outside. We had a July 4th party to attend, so we rested a bit and then headed out about 4:15 pm. When we returned from the party after Midnight, we noticed the room was still hot. We tried to make the best of it and just slept with no sheets on. Another sweaty and sleepless night.||The next morning, I went down once again to ask about the AC. The front desk checked and found that no one had even gone to the room to fix it the prior day.||We went out that afternoon. At 2:10 pm, Steven, the Hotel Director, phoned me. He said the AC could not be fixed and that we would have to move to another room. Steven told me he would call to make sure everything was ok.||So we went back to the hotel to repack our things, move to room 1011, and unpack our things there. We noticed that room too was not cooling down. I went downstairs once again. A very helpful attendant told me they would work on it, but if they couldn’t fix it, we would need to move once more. I told him we really didn’t want to be moved to a 4th room. Plus, we were heading out for dinner, a show and some fun on the town that night. I told him that if we had to move, we would, but really didn’t t want to waste any more of our time for them to place us in a functional room. I asked if Steven, the Director, was available. He said he would go back and check. He came out about 5 minutes later to tell me that Steven had left early that day. ||At this point, I phoned American Express to get their help. The helpful agent reached out to the hotel. She spoke with the Manager on duty, Naida. Naida told the agent that Steven was on the train, but would call me when he arrived home. He never phoned. When we got back to the hotel, I spoke with Naida. She was very helpful. She told me that they were discussing compensation, but that she was not authorized to offer it herself. She told me Steven would call me the next day to discuss compensation. ||I asked her for a fan. They were able to fix the AC in the room, and with the fan, we were finally able to sleep. ||I waited over 24 hours for Steven to call regarding the compensation. After a matinee show, I reached out to American Express once again on the way back to the hotel. She spoke with Naida and then told me that the hotel was only willing to discuss compensation with me directly. When I arrived at the hotel, Naida informed me that they were willing to comp me the first two nights and offer a 50% discount on the second day two night. That sounded reasonable, so I accepted.||This morning, I went down to check-out only to find that they were unable to execute what had been agreed upon. They offered me $817 credit on the almost $1,800 I had prepaid for the hotel. The manager on duty was unable to reconcile the amount I had paid with what was in their system. After 30 minutes, she told me I would need to call American Express for them to agree on the numbers. There was a longer than usual wait for American Express Travel due to the hurricane hitting the Texas coast. We had to leave for the airport to catch our flight, so I asked the Manager to send me an email documenting the compensation. Trust in any business is built when people do what they say they’re going to do. At this point based on my experience with the Standard High Line, I had no trust that they would do what they said they were going to do.||The Manager sent the email, and at that time, the American Express agent came on the line. He spoke with the Manager and then told me that he would need to call them on their hotel line. We had to leave for the airport, so we got in the car and I held on the line with the agent. ||After 45 minutes at the hotel and an hour on the phone with American Express, they were finally able to get it close to the correct amount of the agreed upon compensation. ||And don’t even get me started on the broken elevators with lines out to the lobby to get in the only elevator (out of 4) that was working. And the evening we had to walk down the stairs from the 10th floor because no elevators were working.||Hotel stays should never be this...

We spent Easter weekend here for our 10th year anniversary celebration. I booked the hotel months in advance. I saved up and wanted to have a lavish no expense spared weekend. Upon arrival I was impressed with the decor and architecture. The lobby is very swanky and modern. Front desk clerk was kind and quickly issued our keys and gave us a lowdown on the area. Smooth transition after walking the highline to get to the hotel.

Hotel is located in the meatpacking district and an affluent area. It has easy access to beautiful parks on the harbor, shopping, and bars. The subway is about 2-3 blocks away.

Hotel room was modern and gorgeous. We purchased the bubbles package and there was champagne waiting for us in the room. There is a loaded mini bar in the room that we didn't use. It has snacks, medicine, liquor and glasses. The tub was HUGE and amazing. We both fit in it just fine and enjoyed champagne and used bathbombs to soak in from Lush. As i am writing this and checking the details of the "Go big for bubbles" we were supposed to receive a 30.00 credit for drinks at the hotel. We received no such voucher or credit upon check in or during our bill at the Standard Grill. So loss of a star for that detail.

We also reserved a drag brunch seat for Saturday's "Snatched" event. We had food and several drinks before and during the show. Our wait staff was amazing and recommended the best drinks. We weren't happy with the food we received avocado toast and a tartine toast with blood orange on it. I wasn't particularly fond of the menu, likely because I'm not used to such lavish food choices. It wasn't that the food was bad, we just didn't care for the new dishes we tried. We let the waiter know and he offered to replace but we preferred to just drink and enjoy the show at that point. The dozen roses, Penny Drop, Blind Tiger were all superb cocktails. They weren't super heavy on the booze but well balanced and enjoyable which was perfect for brunch.

We tried to check out the beirgarden but it wasn't clear how to purchase a beer. We walked in and the ticket booth was not attended and the person checking our ID didn't explain how it worked. We waited in line at a bar for abour 8 minutes and decided to leave due to confusion, slow service, and how busy it was. We went next door to BB Burger & Brass Monkey and had the best cheeseburger i've ever had in my life. Highly recommend.

Sleeping at night; The hotel pillows are made of down and are not well packed. If you like longer loose pillows that will make your head fall between them this is your jam. The bed is lower to the floor like Ikea style and the mattress comfy. The bed in our room was against the shower/bath window.

Let's talk about the soundproofing in the room now. Generally, acoustics is a very tricky thing to perfect in architecture, especially with large scale hotels. So each night when we were heading to bed around midnight there was a loud music source. The standard provides a speaker in the room and it's super great. I thought it was from perhaps some people jamming in the echo chamber of the highline below and chalked it off to NYC living. However, when i woke up at 2:00 am and checked the area from the window it was empty. It wasn't until my last night there did we realize it was someone's speaker blasting music. That night music sounded like chillhop and continued from 11:00 pm to 6 am straight. I went to sleep and woke up at 4:00 am trying to determine where the loud noise was coming from. I could not go back to sleep and i was very tired the following day. So for a 500.00 a night stay, I expect a nice quiet sleep with minimal noise and we never received that. We didn't know where it was coming from until it was too late to do anything.

Overall, this was a high quality experience but a tad below the experience you'd expect for top dollar hotel. Highly recommend for a getaway to splurge or celebrate an occasion. Very modern and different then...

Please, I beg you, do not hold an event here or book large room blocks. This place is an absolute nightmare and I still get upset about how I, my wedding party, and guests were treated over 3 years later, so I figured it was time to finally write a review. To this day, I am SO thankful that we chose to only use The Standard for accommodations and skipped holding our ceremony/reception here. Throughout our wedding week, the only people who were kind and helpful were the bellmen/valet and one particular front desk agent. In my opinion, their attitudes are the most inexcusable part of this all. Being kind is free, but The Standard only thinks you deserve it if you're a celebrity or you pay an asinine amount of money for it.

I should have heeded the red flags during the planning process when our coordinator would not fully read our emails, which resulted in so much of our time being wasted (while we were planning every other aspect of our wedding week) by correcting their mistakes and repeating ourselves over and over. My husband is a corporate event director and booking rooms for large amounts of people is just another day for him, but he swears up and down he's never had a more miserable experience doing so than with The Standard. When we would try to speak with the senior event manager directly, he shoveled us off every single time and would not take our calls. I don't know why I was even the slightest bit surprised when we all showed up and it was the biggest, disorganized fiasco one could imagine. Every single individual in my 40+ person group was placed on different floors, and because they don't allow you to go ANYWHERE but your own floor, it made it close to impossible for my family to go and come from my room. Getting ready the morning of my wedding was beyond stressful because of this alone.

However, the worst event of all was, that prior to arriving, I had asked our coordinator for recommendations of places nearby, or within the hotel, where we could all convene for 30 minutes to let everyone know what the itinerary is on the wedding day, since my wedding party was coming from all over the country. He only provided options that required us to pay for private space within the hotel. I tried conveying that we just needed a nearby restaurant recommendation or a public space we could gather for a brief time, but he would not provide anything that did not directly benefit The Standard Hotel. Fast forward to when this needed to happen and we discovered that the mid-deck patio actually allowed you to select it in the elevator. Remember! Everything was blocked off apart from the floor corresponding with your room key, so like any reasonable person would assume, I thought it was open to hotel guests. My friends and family met here and as my husband was reading off the itinerary, two security guards arrived and were the nastiest humans I have ever interacted with. I told him that we just needed to get through our list and we would be gone in 10 minutes, but he refused and told us we needed to leave immediately... then literally started talking smack to me, threatening me and all. I had had enough at that point because it wasn't just ME they were treating terribly, it was ALL of my loved ones, so we got into a lovely heated exchange that he continued to escalate by making comments under his breath. His behavior was disgusting and recounting how he treated us still makes me sick to my stomach.

And what do you know! My mom walked down the street looking for restaurants that could seat our large party and Bubby's took care of us, allowing us the opportunity to finish chatting with my family about the schedule. Providing a list of nearby restaurants/businesses is standard practice in this industry, and something our coordinator could have done in 5 minutes to avoid all of this. But no, that doesn't help the failing hotel that, according to the news, desperately needs the $.

Please avoid. They don't deserve...