Long legs, square feet: room-rate math for those who value space

Some of us rate hotels by service, others by location or luxury. But what about the price of a room per square foot? It’s not a frivolous question, especially in a place like Manhattan, where hotel rooms are getting dearer and, if anything, smaller.

Pitting rates against square footage, some self-proclaimed cheap chic digs like the Hudson New York may pencil out the same or more than top-of-the-line hotels such as the Four Seasons Hotel New York. Some budget hotels with big rooms may cost little more per day than renting a nearby apartment.

If you care about room size, it pays to ask because the rate doesn’t tell the whole story, as I learned recently when I called 12 Manhattan hotels in the Midtown area to price rooms for the same four-night weekend stay in late January. I chose the hotels to represent a variety of rates and randomly chose Jan. 20 to 23, a Thursday through Sunday. I requested the “best available rate,” with no special discounts. (These rates may no longer be available.) I relied on the front desks for the square-footage count.

The cheapest offer from the Hudson, for instance, was $205 per night for a standard room with queen bed in the Ian Schrager hotel, which on its website calls itself “the ultimate lifestyle hotel for the 21st century,” offering “true affordability.” That looked like a better deal than the Four Seasons’ cheapest, a “moderate room” for $555. Definitely preferable if you have only $205 to spend.

But the Hudson’s standard room varies from 144 to 167 square feet, depending on location, versus 450 square feet at the Four Seasons. The price per square foot: $1.42 for the smallest to $1.23 for the largest standard at the Hudson, $1.23 at the Four Seasons. Had I booked a deluxe king at the Four Seasons, at $705 for 600 square feet, for those dates, I’d have paid $1.18 per square foot.

At four of the lower-priced hotels, the front-desk staffers said they didn’t know the square footage: The Hotel Wolcott ($120 and up), the Comfort Inn Midtown ($100 and up), the Super 8 Hotel ($99.99 and up) and the Vanderbilt Branch YMCA ($75 and up).

“It’s small,” the YMCA clerk said, noting that the $75 room had bunk beds and shared a bath.

Of the eight hotels that provided square footage for their least expensive room, the Red Roof Inn-Manhattan was the low-price leader, at 40 cents a square foot for a 250-square-foot king-bed room ($100). The Buckingham Hotel, at 60 cents per square foot for a 350-square-foot studio suite ($209), was close behind.

For the most expensive spots, the Four Seasons and the Hudson were followed by the Peninsula New York ($1.15 per square foot), the Mandarin Oriental ($1.14 per square foot), W New York-Times Square ($1) and the tony Waldorf-Astoria at -- surprise -- 91 cents.

Typical of the high-end hotels, rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria, which started at $219, often got cheaper per square foot as they got bigger, even though the overall rates rose. But if a room had a better view or was on a concierge floor, the price per square foot went up.

“Bigger is cheaper” reflects economies of scale, some experts told me. Big rooms don’t cost much more to maintain, heat and clean than small rooms. Unless, of course, you add services such as access to a private lounge, bar service, snacks and other perks typical of concierge-level rooms. And many hotel guests seem willing to pay more for views.

Smaller rooms also tend to be more in demand -- ironically making them more valuable per square foot.

The same principle applies to Manhattan real estate, said Andrew Heiberger, president of New York-based Citi Habitats, one of the city’s largest residential leasing firms. Studio apartments, he said, command the highest rentals per square foot, about 10% more than one-bedrooms.

Studios in doorman buildings in Manhattan -- the closest comparison to hotel rooms -- rent for about $44 to $70 per square foot per year, or about 12 to 19 cents per square foot per day, he said. At the Buckingham, which on its website calls itself an “intimate, boutique hotel,” the biggest room I was offered, a king executive suite with 800 to 850 square feet, for $259, penciled out to about 31 cents per square foot per night -- not much more than renting per night.

At the other end of the scale, the Four Seasons’ Royal Suite, at $11,000 per night for 2,000 square feet, looks like a terrible deal -- $5.50 per square foot -- until you consider the intangibles: panoramic views of the city and Central Park, two terraces, seven TVs, goatskin walls, mother-of-pearl chandelier and much more. To those with the money, it might be worth it.

On a smaller scale, the same might be said of the Hudson’s hip customers, willing to pay extra for a scene described by Zagat Survey raters as a “continuous party.”

“There’s a culture that comes with a Hudson hotel,” Heiberger said. And it’s hard to put a price on that.

But it’s not hard to put a price on the average Manhattan hotel room, which has been going for more than $207 per night, according to John A. Fox, senior vice president in New York for PKF Consulting, an international firm of consultants in the hotel and tourism industry.

Manhattan rates, on average, Fox said, increased more than 9% in the first 10 months of this year versus the same period last year -- but are still about 10% to 15% lower than in 2000, when they peaked.

Rates are increasing mainly because business travel is back, Fox said, and Manhattan has lost as many as 1,300 rooms this year as hotels were converted to co-ops and condominiums to take advantage of high real estate prices.

Meanwhile, Heiberger said, “there is absolutely a trend to build smaller rooms in hotels, apartment rentals and condominiums” in the city.

One more reason to ask when you book: How big is my room?

Hear more tips from Jane Engle on Travel Insider topics at www.latimes.com/engle. She welcomes comments but can’t respond individually to letters and calls. Write to Travel Insider, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.