The Benjamin

Comfortable bed. Spacious room with enough storage for clothes. Excellent location if want to be near midtown tourist attractions. Reception staff, concierge and doorman were extremely polite and helpful. Nice view of city lights in the evening from the room. Big TV. Food at the restaurant in the hotel (the National) was delicious.

The decor, fittings, bathrooms, carpets, lifts, in fact almost everything was very dated and in desperate need of modernisation. The air con fan was inside the room and so loud I couldn’t sleep. While the bedroom area was spacious, the bathroom was tiny. No complimentary water in the room. There were two bottles of water for about $8-9 each when two minutes away was a convenience store where one could buy that same bottle for less than half that price. On the morning if my checkout, someone knocked on my door around 10AM asking rather rudely whether I was checking out when in fact the usual check out time is 12 noon. In summary, the hotel did not seem very welcoming in my experience.