Sonder Duane Street

The property has potential with a spacious layout, useful amenities, and a convenient location, but it would benefit greatly from some updating, a thorough deep clean, and more consistent maintenance. With a bit more care, it could offer a truly comfortable and appealing experience.

DO NOT BOOK HERE. THIS PLACE IS A COMPLETE SCAM. The pictures online are deceiving and it's more like a single step up from a hostel. First day here we overheard four staff sitting on couches in the lobby talking about how shocked they were that people paid so much to stay at the hotel. This is my first time ever leaving a review for anywhere because of how terrible of an experience I had at Sonder in Tribeca. I booked a King sized room for three nights at around $600 per night, which ended up actually being so small that my partner and I couldn't even have our suitcases open. First night the AC stopped working, the thermostat was reading 80 degrees in our room and so I messaged the app. Two maintenance people came into our room and said it was busted, one maintenance guy apparently told my fiance "it's not even that hot in here". This was after I asked him to give us a few minutes to pack to move rooms and when I asked if that was okay he said, "well I guess it'll just have to be". Apparently this was the maintenance manager? Where is the professionalism? I ended up having to cancel a dinner with a friend of 20 years who I had not seen because the entire ordeal took over two hours. The person at the front desk said there were no upgrades available to move to a different room and that we could move to an identical room in the building where the air was working. Once we finally agreed to that, we entered into the new room and they had DOWNGRADED us to a queen size room in much worse condition. When I went back down to the front desk (for the fourth time) to tell him he had moved us to a smaller room after saying that the room would be identical he said "oh yeah, looks like it's a queen. That's all we got." We proceeded to spend 1.5 hours on the phone with customer service, who refused to let me speak to a manager or supervisor and said someone would call me back in 24-48 hours and that they couldn't issue me a refund. And then, get this, the AC in our new DOWNGRADED room DOES NOT WORK. I have a theory that this place puts thermostats in the room that make the person believe they're setting the temperature to something but the whole building is probably set to 75 degrees to save money. This place is definitely on the verge of getting shut down. It's bad here: the rooms are in bad condition, poorly managed, unprofessional staff, terrible customer service, and totally uncomfortable. Our stay was only for three nights, if a hotel can not refund someone for very solid reasons less than $2,000 then there's something bigger at play.

Cancelled my reservation online shortly after booking but never received a confirmation email. When I noticed two days later they refused to (even partially) reimburse the money, despite this clearly being an IT failure on their side. On top of this the customer experience was really poor as I had to wait 45min to speak to a live agent who wasn’t able to help at all. Can only recommend choosing another hotel to stay in NYC!

Great and friendly. There is not an ice machine available. I wanted to have ice for an injury I had but that wasn’t possible since there was and is no ice available for guests. That’s a bummer for me. Other than that, awesome. Nice comfy bed, interesting staff, super silent protection from the city sounds…making a good nights sleep possible.

The property has a modern and nice design. The room is in all respects faithful to the photographs on the website: not very large but well furnished and equipped with everything (there are also iron and board, and a large screen with all the main streaming services). I appreciated that there was parquet flooring in the room, definitely preferable to the unhygienic carpeting. The staff is friendly and helpful; the app useful and functional. Drinks always available to guests (water, tea, coffee, chocolate) and umbrellas in free use. I personally agree with the decision not to clean the room daily unless requested, so as to keep costs down and avoid wasting water and energy. The only negative thing I found was the somewhat noisy heating. Also, the shower (which was nice and large) was dripping slightly. I didn't think this was a big problem, however, and in fact I didn't even inform the help desk about it (maybe if I had reported it they would have fixed it).

As stated in many reviews, this is an apartment style accommodation rather than a true hotel. There is no breakfast, fresh coffee, daily housekeeping, 24hr attendant, etc. Other than that, the room and lobby were fine. It was safe and this location (Duane St) was wonderful for exploring Manhattan.