voco Times Square South New York by IHG — Hotel in New York

This hotel is a quaint hotel. It's tucked away in the fashion district, so I wouldn't exactly consider this "Times Square". It's a bit off the path of Times Square, so I might give more description of that to people who don't know the proximity. I was really excited to stay here after hearing about the brand and wanted to experience what the brand says..."reliable, but different enough to be fun".

I really liked the lobby, the grab and go area was convenient and nice, and the dining area was casual, with indoor, and courtyard areas. The linens and product were nice in the rooms, and it was quiet and clean, so reliable, yes. They cheapened out on the hairdryers though! I love a nice hair dryer in my hotel room, and these were the low power, cheap kind of hair dryers!

It's evident from this stay that in general hotels are still struggling with finding capable and enthusiastic employees. I didn't think the employees were overly friendly, nor did they seem to be excited to be there. Upon check in, the front desk employee was nice and after reading the notes that were in my reservation, became more engaged. There were no rooms ready when I arrived early on Saturday, but she indicated there should be something ready by noon and she would text me when the room was available. The expectation was set, but I never received a text. I waited and finally went back after 4pm for regular check-in. I'm assuming the room just couldn't be ready that early, but there wasn't any communication as indicated there would be.

Additionally, the wait staff for breakfast seemed distracted and it took a long time to get our food. On Monday we waited more than 40 minutes for our breakfast to be served cold, and the staff was completely disengaged in serving the morning breakfast crowd. Our waitress seemed irritated that we asked about our food after waiting for 40+ minutes. It's important to set realistic expectations for guests if breakfast is going to take a long time because of limited resources, but 40-45 minutes when she indicated French toast takes 15 minutes to cook is a little excessive. We were never offered more coffee or water, and there was little interaction from the staff. I offer grace on this one because i know of the struggle of hotel staffing, but it's something to be aware of.

Perhaps the worst part of the weekend was the fact that one elevator was out of service for the duration of our stay at VOCO. We were on the 15th floor and it wasn't uncommon to be waiting 15-20 minutes to be able to get an elevator up or down because the 1 working elevator was always filled with people and luggage. Having broken my tailbone on Saturday morning prior to coming to NYC, taking the stairs wasn't an option, so this inconvenience was significant for me. Additionally, there was no communication, accommodation, or service recovery from this outage. As a newer hotel, I would expect the elevators to be working properly, or have a service provider on call for this kind of disruption so as not to inconvenience a hotel full of guests. At the very least, there should've been some offer of points to appease the guests who had to wait

Overall, I liked the hotel concept, and a lot of the features and amenities. The level of service, and living up to the expectation of being "fun" needs to be refined, along with servicing customer when there's a major service outage such as 1 of 2 elevators being down for 2+ days and the entire guest population being impacted. Employees need to be more skilled in providing an engaging interaction with the guests, and living up to the expectations that the VOCO brand has envisioned.

I'd be willing to give the hotel another try in a few months time to see if things have improved with the service, but I really hope the elevator is working next time and the employees don't seem so stressed, but rather are living out the mission of the hotel to be...

I was lucky enough to be able to book this stay with reward points, so value for money is not an issue here. All of the staff were great, but the facilities and other things left a lot to be desired.

I booked a double-double room for myself and my mum to get a bed each. This room can sleep up to 4 people, if two couples, or maybe a couple with small children. However the room is very small. There are not many surfaces to place belongings onto, and there are only 3 coat hooks and a tiny hanging area for clothes. There is not much floor space to place suitcases and shoes, so any more than 2 people sharing this room would be extremely difficult, as we struggled just with us 2. The beds were definitely not the same quality as I am used to at the Voco Haymarket Edinburgh. They were very creaky. The bedside table is tiny and with rounded edges, so things had to be crammed on and would frequently fall off. I think this is how I got a crack on my iPhone screen.

The extractor fan in the bathroom was extremely loud. To the point where you could not hold a conversation whilst using the bathroom mirror with the light on (as the fan comes on automatically with the light) with someone outside the bathroom as it was impossible to hear what each other was saying.

The air conditioner just came on randomly and violently throughout the night, which woke me up every time. It also kicked out super cold air despite being set to 70 degrees.

The only meals we ate in the hotel were breakfasts. The food was decent, however, the process of ordering was awful. There was no buffet; you just ordered at the bar and waited with a buzzer. There was no way to book breakfast in advance, so you just had to join a queue across the reception area and wait in line to order. This was a total shock our first morning, especially because you're standing right in front of the main entrance, so any time someone moves or goes in or out, you're blasted by the freezing cold air outside. It was just a guessing game each morning as to what time to go for and whether you'd queue for 10 minutes or 45 minutes. The wait for the food was also quite long. This made some of our mornings very stressful as we had tours etc planned that we had to be out on time for.

My only other gripe is the amenity fee. I had queried this before travelling and was told I did not have to pay it, but this was not an option at the hotel. It included a 10 dollar bar credit, slippers in the room, snacks in reception and access to gym classes. We did not want or need any of those things. We only used the bar credit so as not to waste it. We did not need slippers as we had brought our own. We did not want or need gym classes; we did more than enough steps as tourists throughout our days. The snacks in reception was popcorn which 2 out of the 5 days of our stay wasn't even there. In the other three, there were just crumbs left in the bottom. There was also a hot chocolate station, which was not there a few of the days either, and the one day I did try to get some, it was empty. I really could've done without having to pay an additional 150 dollars on arrival, especially having been told on the web chat that I did not have to. So this was very frustrating.

All in all we really enjoyed New York. The hotel staff were great, especially Elena at breakfast and the two evening barmen (not sure their names). The hotel is in a decent location for access to tourist attractions and public transport. But we would not return to this hotel when we come back to...

Worst place I’ve ever stayed. Some staff are nice but somewhat useless, most of them are mean and useless and their elevators are the worst!

I reported my room for not having hot water as soon as i checked in. 2-3 hours later, there was still no hot water. After reporting it again and asked them for a new room since nothing had been fixed, they gave me a nothing answer saying this must be a whole building problem not just my room so changing rooms ain’t fix anything so just wait until someone to fix it. I addressed that I already reported it hours ago but if that’s the case, give a call to my room with an update since they told me they don’t know how long it’ll take to fix it. Half an hour later, there was no update at all nor hot water and it was getting late. I called again and they told me a staff is coming up to fix the vent which was wide open in my bathroom and I’ll get hot water in a few minutes. The maintenance guy was nice enough to explain the issue briefly(apparently all the room below 10th floor did not get hot water which is insane) and apologized. He was the first and last one who apologized for the huge inconvenience. Yet, 30m later, i still had no hot water. I had to go to the concierge AGAIN to address the issue and they did not try to fix the problem nor find a solution to my problem. After asking them to change my room to any room that is above 10th floor so that we could shower at the hotel that we paid for, i could finally move to a new slightly smaller sized room and have access to hot water. By the time I moved to a new room, it was already around 9pm. I checked in at 4. 5hours of coming up and down to the concierge, re-addressing the same issue over and over, and calling the guest service department, the only staff who apologized was the maintenance guy. The rest of them treated me like I was the one who’s making the problem and never apologized for the inconvenience.

There are two elevators for +20 stories hotel. The wait time for the elevator has been insane and one of them had been broken so I had to wait for 15-20m just to get down to the lobby. Even after fixing the elevator, the wait for the elevator still crazy compare to all the buildings I’ve been to, which includes way taller buildings.

AC here works fine as long as you set the fan setting to high, but since you can’t adjust the angle on the fan, it dries out your face when you’re not lying down.

If you’re planning to travel in NYC in tight schedule, you’ll be behind your schedule due to the elevator. If you’re planning to have a hot shower after a long flight, you might not have hot water and need to make several trips to hope it will get fixed eventually. If you need some help from the staff here, you might get scolded and not getting any help and being ignored. If you’re planning to stay with more than 2 people per room, you’ll not have enough room to open the luggage without giving up on having a clear path to the bathroom. If you have a sensitive skin or if you’re not a big fan of scratching your body with a old, worn, and rough towels, you prob need to bring your own towel.

DO...