New York City: Hilton Garden Inn Park Avenue (March 2019)

Hilton Garden Inn Park Avenue - Rooms Smallish, TV Position Inconvenient, HVAC Issues
My spouse and I stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn New York Park Avenue on a Saturday evening in early March 2019. We reserved our stay online using the Hilton HHonors website. We received an email from the property manager in advance of our stay, which was a nice touch. (We also received an email afterwards thanking us and asking for comments.) Although we didn’t receive an email offering online check-in the day prior to our stay, we could have done so through the Hilton website.
The HGI Park Avenue is located on East 33rd Street (between Madison and Park Avenues). Many restaurants (including Wolfgang’s Steak House on the corner), bars, shops, and other hotels are located within walking distance, as is one of NYC’s iconic sights, the Empire State Building. A Duane Reade Pharmacy and a 7-11 convenience store are located on the same block as the hotel, so you can purchase drinks (including alcohol), snacks, and sundry items for your room. (The hotel also offers a 24-hour pantry where you can purchase items [although not beer or wine].)
Hotel amenities include a 24-hour fitness center on the basement level (which we did not use), a business center, free Wi-Fi, private function rooms, and a full-service restaurant and bar (called The Ainsworth, which also offers a second-floor terrace bar). (Although we are Hilton HHonors Diamond members, we requested additional points for our stay rather than eating the hotel’s buffet breakfast.) The hotel offers a complimentary beverage station in the lobby, with either hot coffee or cold flavored water, depending on the time of day. The small lobby is attractive, offering seating in three places: a more private street-view lounge area, a space with a high communal table for working or eating, and another soothing lounge area with a water feature.
The hotel offers rooms in the categories of King (247 square feet), King View (241 square feet), 2 Doubles, and 2-Room Suite (319 square feet). Guest rooms offer free Wi-Fi, microwaves, mini-refrigerators, electronic safes, and Keurig coffee machines. We felt the TV was a little undersized for our room (even though the room was not large); even worse was that the TV was positioned atop a low piece of furniture, which made viewing from the (somewhat high) bed difficult. Our HVAC unit didn’t seem to function properly, but because we had read so many reviews from past guests with similar problems, it didn’t seem worth calling the front desk to try to fix it. We were assigned Room 1100, which gave us a slight view of the Empire State Building (although we didn’t book a “view” room, we were upgraded at check in; in return for the view, we got 6 square feet less of floor space). Although our room was located right next to one of the three elevators, we never heard it. (We also never waited more than a minute for an elevator, despite the hotel being sold out.) Our room had a long hallway that contained the closet and storage unit for the microwave and refrigerator. The contemporary bathroom was located off the hallway, with a full-size modern shower (no bathtub), toilet, and vanity with single sink (which offered plenty of storage space, along with lots of towel and complimentary Neutrogena toiletries of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion). The main room had a king-size bed with a nightstand on each side, the furniture piece that held the TV, a desk with a rolling chair, and a comfy chair and ottoman.
We loved the location of the HGI Park Avenue, and we could have dealt with the coziness of the room if the TV had been better positioned (even mounted to the wall, which would provide more surface space for people to store belongings) and the HVAC system worked properly.






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