Transfer out of Manhattan to get best value New York hotels

Visitors to New York – and over 56 million visited last year – are discovering a new way  to make serious savings on hotel prices – stay out of Manhattan.

The Manhattan skyline is one of the world’s iconic images but staying in the borough’s hotels cost an average of $241 a night – and that’s for accommodation with a three-star rating. Image by joiseyshowaa / CC BY-SA 2.0

Even three star accommodation in the borough – south of Harlem – costs on average a whopping $241 a night… enough to stop countless millions more from taking a bite out of the Big Apple because they think that spending holiday-time there is out of their league financially.

Queens is near the major sites tourists want to see in New York but is much cheaper for hotel accommodation Image by Tony Fischer / CC BY 2.0

However the New York Times reports that travellers on strict budgets now find they can get better bang for their buck by locating to other boroughs such as Queens or Brooklyn, where numerous hotels have opened up in the last 18 months to tempt a different type of visitor to the city.

Brooklyn is an option to the costly rate of hotel prices in New York Image by Firoz Ansari / CC BY 2.0

And the good news for potential visitors is that a further 30 hotels are planning to open next year and beyond. Research by the newspaper found that once you stayed out of central and lower Manhattan, the savings were immediate and often immense as well. While Manhattan averaged $241 for a three-star, a similar grade in Queens was $85 less. Queens in fact emerged well across the star-ratings with a four-star averaging $60 cheaper. Brooklyn wasn’t able to match those prices but it was still relatively cheap in comparison to Manhattan with three-star coming in at $185. A left field alternative for many is New Jersey with a three-star average of $170 though Jersey City and Hoboken were pricier – reflecting the fact they are so close to Manhattan by PATH train or boat.