Hospitality Nerd in NYC (Travel Guide)

This is a travel guide for hospitality nerds 🤓🏨

I'm absolutely passionate about hospitality, and when I travel, I love to explore new concepts.

I “sneak" into the hotel lobbies, then check restaurants, rooftop, and common areas. I observe people, interactions, and details. Sometimes I work from there on my laptop. Then I write my observations on Hotel Nuggets.

Inspiration can come from restaurants or museums too, not just hotels.

All these places on this list are in some (often weird) way inspiring for me. This is my second compilation, the first one is "Hospitality Nerd in Amsterdam".

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Hotels

• Ace Hotel Manhattan - OGs of hipster boutique concepts and I admire that they still keep themselves relevant (aka cool) after so many years. The lobby/bar/reception's vibe is something between a classic London speakeasy bar and a club.
• Equinox - Hotel for wealthy people who are into wellness. Opened by an upscale gym chain with the same name (famous in the US, but unknown to people from other places). Go to the rooftop and have a look. So many little details (starting with the handles in the elevator).
• CitizenM Bowery - Visit the flagship location of this smaller international hotel chain. Target audience are people looking for a modern hotel for with a good value for money. CitizenM mastered their positioning and I found there a lot of inspiration.
• Autocamp - You have to drive a bit up the north to the Catskills. Cool upscale glamping brand with a very special lobby/restaurant/reception building. Another uniqueness are Airstreams you can rent for your overnight stay. Very picturesque, superb marketing. Autocamp has a partnership with Hilton that promotes in their channels, website and loyalty program.
• Getaway Cabins - Another VC-funded glamping startup. Originally started as a digital detox cabin, then trying to do kind of bit of everything. The experience was exceptional, every detail is very well thought. Focus on self-service. They rebranded to "Postcard Cabins" in 2024 and then acquired by Marriott.
• Bowery hotel - Absolutely stunning lobby and restaurant at the ground floor.
• 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge - Epic views fn Manhattan across the river. Cool modern hotel with very well-executed details.
• Moxy East Village - The interior and location of the Cathédrale restaurant was something completely unexpected in this mid-range hotel.
• Public - This Ian Schrager's masterpiece is be probably my favorite hotel in NYC. Must visit for all hospitality nerds. Also interesting to see how a strong brand can completely beat a shitty location (homeless people, dirty everywhere around). The hotel is like an oasis and I can imagine that most guests spend a lot of time there using all the services.
• The Beekman - Must visit for all art deco fans.
• Brooklyn hipster hotels - There are 4 hipster hotels in Williamsburg located at one street all next to each other: Wythe, Hoxton, Arlo and The William Vale. All of them are super nice but what is fascinating: the location. Absolutely nothing there, it feels like an artificially created "destination" for wealthier traveling hipsters, built on relatively cheap real estate (relative to NYC prices). Must be printing money.

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Restaurants and cafés

• Los Tacos No.1 - Fast food restaurant design masterpiece (and also my fav place to go for a quick bite). Every single detail is well thought, great concept.
• Katz's Delicatessen - NYC institution where with long queues all the time. Probably one of a few places where the waiting is actually worth it. Very unique experience and the pastrami sandwich is out of this world.
• Smacking Burger - This burger joint took a small corner of a dodgy gas station in the middle of Manhattan and overhyped the brand on social media in less than one month.
• ‍Popup bagels - I asked my friend Jon, who has the best bagel place in Amsterdam, about the top place in NYC. Queue of 100 meters with Tiktokers craving for new content. But what I found fascinating, there is another bagel place next door called Leon that offered exactly the same as Popup but the queue was 5 minutes. I'm sure they are crushing it, with zero spend on marketing. ‍
• Au Cheval - Supposed to the best burger in NYC and it was. Enough reason to visit and study why.‍
• Starbucks Reserve Roastery - Fascinating how global brands have different standards in different countries. Starbucks in Europe is usually an upscale place with premium prices while in the US is the most standard place to have a coffee. Then you go to Asia, where is even more upscale than in Europe. Starbucks Reserve is a flagship location in NYC. It's huge and inspiring even if you are not a Starbucks fun (I'm not). The one in Tokyo was way more impressive.‍
• TimeOut Market - Take a boring foodcourt with average food, make it fancy, top location, add top marketing and scale it around the world. Should be studies in business schools. ‍
• Holsten's Ice Cream - For Sopranos fans. I loved everything about this place.‍
• Devoción - Hipster café places that originated Brooklyn. They created extremely strong brand with just a few places and I bet they make most money with the wholesale program now. Very smart if that was intentional.

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Others

• Glossier - By far the most unique retail experience in NYC. I was the only man in the shop.
• Supreme - People or love or make jokes of this brand. By visiting the store you can confirm your position, whatever it is.
• Rivian - Completely redefined how the car showroom can look like.
• MoMA - Must for everyone who loves modern art but your visit will get a different dimension if you are fan on Will Guidara and his book Unreasonable Hospitality.
• Dogpound - Taylor Swift is a member. A gym for good-looking rich people. Membership for $36,000/year.
• Outdoor playgrounds - About 80-90% of outdoor playgrounds in NYC are terrible - homeless people, dirty, no kids. But top 5% playgrounds are worldclass. They are destinations themselves. WaterLab is my favorite.
• Bathhouse Flatiron - Underground bathhouse with a futuristic vibe and extremely well designed self-service experience. Cool story too - the pools are heated by mining Bitcoin.
• Whole Foods - Must visit for any European who never been in one.
• EDGE observation deck - I kind of avoided tourist spots but this one was very close to my apartment and I'm glad that I went. The views were incredible but the whole user experience, upselling, merchandise is inspiring. "Selling a view" can be a solid business.