Insider's Top Tips: New York Travel Guide

Touring a city like New York is an experience of a lifetime, as there is truly something in the city for everyone. The diversity of the city is the key to its charm, and the best bit about a New York break is finding that certain niche within the city where you can feel at home. For many of the estimated 44 million visitors to New York per year however, the feeling of being right at home in the city that never sleeps unfortunately doesn't extend to their choice of hotels rooms. For all the opportunity on offer in terms of tastes, sights and sounds in the city's prime neighborhoods and tourist attractions, it's rare to find a hotel that matches a sublime New York encounter. The vast majority of visitors to the city tend to bunk down in a bland Midtown hotel that offers the same stock-standard rooms, the same starchy bedspreads and the same insipid artworks.

Why should this characterize a visit to as city as wild and wonderful as New York?

In a recent guide to the city, travel writer Joshua Stein lists his 'Top 10' favorite New York hotels, each brimming with charm and character, and each as individual as the guests who frequent these no-longer-hidden gems. How's this for the first three: for those who like to party hard there is always the East Village Bed and Coffee; for aspiring writers, The Algonquin; and for hipster Edwardian fops, The Bowery Hotel. If you like the sound of this then you'll certainly know where to go if you're a first-timer, an old-timer, a foodie or a culture vulture.

An insider's guide to the city certainly serves well for all those who are looking for something a little different on their next holiday. While there may be a zillion hotels in New York to chose from, it helps to be directed to a certain venue if you're, for instance a breast-feeding mum with screaming toddlers (his words, not ours; and for the record it's the Holiday Inn Express Brooklyn, located on Park Slope, which as any New Yorker would know is the veritable baby mecca of New York).

Our favorite recommendation is the The Larchmont Hotel. This one falls into the category of "For Cheapskates Who'd Rather Spend The Money Shopping" and when it comes to visiting New York from virtually any other city around the globe, the appeal of a few dollars saved on accommodation and better directed into shop-till-you-drop is a worthwhile consideration. This school of thought also applies to Paris and London hotels, however nowhere is like New York for snapping up a bargain. Why not start with savings on the hotel room and then begin the splurge from there? However you decide to take it, the New York experience is one that should be enjoyed by one and all.