Distrikt Hotel in New York City

When in New York last month, Keira and I stayed at the Distrikt Hotel between Hell’s Kitchen and the Theatre District. Keira originally found the hotel listed online through Expedia and watched customer reviews pour in since its launch earlier in 2010. Scanning Yelp consistently and seeing that the price was right (packaged with our airfare) she recommended we book with Distrikt.

Some of the Google Street Views showed the area as being under construction and seeing as how the hotel only opened a few months ago I did some research before our trip.

I found out that it was a part of the Ascend Collection from Choice Hotels International. To me, this meant it wasn’t just a regular boutique hotel that might not even exist (or be completed) by the time we finally took our trip, but it was backed by a major hotel chain heading in a refreshed direction. Leading up to our trip we even followed the hotel on Twitter to track their progress and engagement after their grand opening. To say we did our homework would be an understatement.

Upon arriving at the hotel we were about 6 hours early for check-in due to our red-eye flight out of YVR. Regardless we were able to get checked in and were about to leave our bags in their secure holding area when we found out our room was ready already. The Distrikt isn’t just a funky mis-spelled name for the hotel, it’s actually a theme. Each couple of floors are themed to represent a different neighbourhood in Manhattan. We were in Chelsea on floor 19.

The hotel is very slim and only has 4 rooms on each floor. The good part about that our room was very spacious, it had far more space than your standard room. There was an iPod dock in the alarm clock, a flat-screen TV, honour bar, desk, wardrobe and plenty of drawer space. The washroom was standard-sized and you could tell there probably was a bathtub that was taken out to make room for the glass-enclosed shower with subway tile. As we were out and about quite a bit, it was a great place to rest our heads at the end of the day.

The staff was incredibly friendly including the bellhop who ran down the street in the pouring rain to catch us a cab on our last night in the city. They had courtesy umbrellas (a very basic feature but nice nevertheless), a bank of iMac computers in the front lobby, turndown service, and a bistro just off the lobby.

I only have a few small critiques…

Other than that, we really enjoyed our stay at the Distrikt. Whether you’re traveling to New York in the near future or plotting a hotel stay in any North American city, I highly recommending doing a bit of research like we did. Check Yelp, then check and see if they have a social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.) Looking in on those reviews and communications can be really valuable. In fact, there was a user review on Yelp about the hallway noise so it wasn’t unexpected.

I would definitely recommend the Distrikt for your next New York stay. It’s in a row of about 4 other hotels so there’s plenty of foot traffic and taxis available. Being right across from Port Authority you have every amenity available including quick subway transfers and fresh Auntie Anne’s pretzels (which satisfied cravings for Keira). Let’s just hope the room rates don’t skyrocket too much now that Distrikt’s made its splash onto the scene.

You can view the rest of my photos from New York in my Flickr set, and Keira’s photos of the hotel are on Flickr and in her blog post.

Disclosure: We paid full price for our booking however we did receive a free room upgrade after communicating with the hotel’s management company about our stay ahead of time.