Best business hotels in New York City

There are more than 200 hotels in Manhattan. Uptown or downtown, hip or classic, large or small, for a few hundred dollars per night or many thousands. The trick is finding the right one for your next business trip.

Business travel, dampened nationwide by a sluggish economy and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is back. Between 1998 and 2003, domestic business and convention travel plunged 14%, according to a report issued earlier this month by the Travel Industry Association of America, the National Business Travel Association and the Institute of Business Travel. 2004 saw a 4% increase in business and convention travel, and the report concluded by projecting strong growth in the next several years.

In Manhattan, this increase is a welcome change for the city's beleaguered hospitality industry. NYC & Company, New York's official tourism marketing organization, calculated that in 2003 (the last year for which data are available) domestic business travelers to New York spent $4.1 billion. And as other factors help the business travel recovery, spending will increase.

"Coming into 2005, business travel looked like it would be up 4.5% to 5%, with key business centers, obviously including New York, outperforming the average," says Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, a Philadelphia-based firm that tracks trends in the business travel industry. But Mitchell says the fare fights between low-fare carriers like JetBlue (nasdaq: - - ) and industry mainstays such as Delta (nyse: - - ), Continental (nyse: - - ) and US Airways are a further stimulus to business travel.

Sean Hennessey, who runs a New York-based hotel consultancy called Lodging Investment Advisors, is expecting you. "In 2002 and 2003," he says, "the best nights of the week for New York hotels were Friday and Saturday," which indicates that leisure travel dominated the hotel market. In 2004, Hennessey noticed that occupancy rates for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were way up--hotels were packed midweek. "That was a telltale sign for the turnaround in New York City business travel," he says.

Hotels have noticed the surge too, and Hennessey points out that the best business hotels are cutting back on the discounted rates normally available online. "They're saving their inventory for high-paying commercial travelers," he explains.

And businesses seem perfectly willing to play along. In recent years, commercial and investment banks had to cut back on nonessential travel like training meetings and group trips. With the economy recovering, companies are reintroducing these trips and paying top dollar for them.

One hotel that made our list, the Hotel Gansevoort, was designed with big business events in mind. The hotel's rooftop lounge features a 45-foot heated outdoor pool in which you can listen to underwater music--the first pool of its kind in Manhattan. Next door, the event loft's wall-to-wall windows, landscaped roof and garden, and 360-degree views are a great venue for product launches, and everyone from Motorola (nyse: - - ) to WebMD (nasdaq: - - ) to Abercrombie & Fitch (nyse: - - ) has celebrated here.

New York's hotels are capitalizing on another business travel trend. According to Tom Downing, general manager at Trump International, the entertainment executives that the hotel accommodates are staying longer and bringing their families. "We have people coming from L.A.," Downing explains, who plan their trip around a weekend to make the most of their time. "They tend to be here for a few days, and our rooms," with huge walk-in closets and floor-to-ceiling windows, "are conducive to long-term stays."

For these family-minded executives, Trump International offers a Kids on Central Park Package that includes a night in a two-bedroom suite, a fridge pre-stocked with kid-friendly treats, and milk and cookies at turndown.

When the St. Regis, which is owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts (nyse: - - ), opened in 1907, suite bathrooms were the height of luxury. Today, New York business travelers expect Wi-Fi, 24/7 tech support and audiovisual equipment in their conference rooms and suites. In the very best business hotels, the distinction between the best and the second-best may be as subtle as the thread count on the sheets. But Frette not. We devised a comprehensive point system for our evaluations and scoured the city from Battery Park to Museum Mile.

To judge the best hotels, we assigned points for the categories most important to business travelers: Internet access (1 point for wireless hot spots, 1 more for in-room high-speed access), quality of business center (1 for open 24/7, 1 for outstanding service), quality of restaurant (1 for a celebrity chef, 1 for a Zagat rating), and meeting or event spaces (1 if available, 1 if Internet-ready). Depending on these factors and the hotel's regular clientele, we assigned an industry and awarded additional points based on accessibility to clients. Finally, we tallied up each hotel's point value.