Iconic Four Seasons New York Reopens, After Long Closure

This is great news! The Central Park Suite with Terrace is terrific, and I can't wait for this property to reopen!

Not trying to open up a can of worms with political comments... but the main reason rates have gone up isn't the AirBNB crackdown (although that's certainly a factors). A HUGE amount of hotel inventory has been taken offline trying to house all the migrants that have come to NYC. That is the main reason for rates going up. Rates were steadily going down due to so many hotels coming online, but now I think it's something like 20% of hotels rooms are now being used to house migrants (someone please feel free to provide the exact/correct amount).

Few comments

1) Before Covid, NYC was seen as a terrible hotel market for hotel owners due to a huge amount of hotel supply (think high rise Hilton Garden Inn / Fairfields on every corner) and Airbnb, which kept rates low, and high operating costs, which kept profits even lower. In this environment, Ty Warner was upset that he had to keep paying Four Seasons fees even though the hotel was not profitable. Covid-19 gave him an opportunity to close the hotel and put pressure on Four Seasons in terms of their contract

1) hershysf is correct that the conversion of 20% of those NYC hotel rooms to migrant housing has been a big reason why NYC rates have increased. Lucky is also correct that Airbnb rules have also driven NYC rates higher by removing a lot of Airbnb inventory. Another new thing here is that in the future, new hotels have to be approved by the city council, which means they likely will have to be unionized, which has slowed down future hotels under construction. This has made the rate outlook in NYC attractive.

Most of the migrant hotels will never reopen if/when that situation changes, and fewer new hotels will replace them given the city council rules - which is making profit outlook in NYC look better. As a result it probably became easier for Warner and Four Seasons to come to an agreement. Even with all of this, it is still not easy to make profits owning hotels in NYC.

NYC remains a very popular tourist destination, but long term, the city needs to figure out how to add hotel rooms and to keep them affordable for tourists, and how to make owning hotels more profitable (so that owners will want to build more hotels), all while making employees (unions) and tax collectors happy. Not an easy task in an expensive city like NYC.

$1200 plus tax, ha ha ha ha.

We always had a soft spot for the Manhattan suites, with their stunning views from the Chrysler Building to all the way downtown.

Great to see an iconic NY property reopen. However, if the photos you posted are accurate, it’s disappointing to see the same room design as a decade ago, especially when we were promised a complete renovation.

Note that the hotels being turned into shelters are typically bottom of the barrel hotels... Yes that has made an impact on hotel prices but at that level, not at the luxury level Four Seasons plays at. Luxury rates have increased dramatically all around the world due to high demand for luxury travel. That's about it. The Four Seasons in Philly routinely charges $1000+, and even the Boston ones are routinely $800+, $1000+ during peak spring/summer.

The base rooms were the roomiest and best in NYC. It was a great hotel pre 2020. Will be interesting to see how it fares today.

Those rates though, amazing how things have changed. It would often be $600 a night pre-covid. While I understand the aspect of location and so many incredible restaurants it always amazed me that it had little F&B offerings beyond the garden for breakfast and lunch and the bar for dinner. They never seemed motivated to create a branded chef driven restaurant which they could have easily done. And, of course, the small Beanie Baby shop off the front desk was more than bizarre.

Ken is correct here. The FS was used to house "first responders" and healthcare workers at the beginning of the pandemic, but for the most part it was lower-tier hotels that has been used for that. People need to stop evaluating the "NYC Hotel Market" and break it out between tiers. The luxury market bounced back in a BIG way, and rates are simply a reflection of demand. They have been at all-time highs for a few years now. Meanwhile, the lower-end of the NYC hotel market has indeed struggled. It's easy to blame migrants and the pandemic, but the fact of the matter is there is a huge amount of inventory. Just go to Marriott/IHG/Hilton's maps of NYC and you'll get a sense. The fact is that it's an expensive market and that's why it's struggling. (Average) tourists are going elsewhere, or are doing shorter stays.