When New York City’s Moxy Times Square hotel opens for business on Monday, it won’t be the city’s biggest, most luxurious, or most anticipated. But it may well be the boldest new property in town, a shot across the bow of Airbnb, with 612 obsessively designed rooms, three separate rooftop cocktail bars, two restaurants, one egg sandwich shop, and zero front desks. It is, in short, a hotel aimed at Millennials and their friends, a low-cost, high-style bunkhouse with some of the most thoughtful design we’ve seen since Ian Schrager's Public popped up on the Lower East Side this June.
Moxy is already well known in Europe for small-but-smartly built rooms; airport-style, tablet-based check-ins; and no-frills service. While it's less known here in the U.S., that may soon change, says Arne Sorenson, the president and CEO of Marriott International, which launched Moxy in Milan in 2014. “There are [already] 32 signed deals for Moxy in the U.S., including some of the most relevant cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Seattle, and Denver,” says Sorenson. “Internationally, there are more than 60 approved Moxy Hotels deals.”
To help set the Times Square property apart, Moxy tapped two design-world stars to make the most of a gut-renovated, historic hotel building on 36th Street and Seventh Avenue: Yabu Pushelberg handled the guest rooms and lobby while Rockwell Group did the restaurants. The results are simply stunning: Many rooms have plush king beds, and all come with gorgeous glazed-stone sinks, spacious rainfall showers, what the hotel calls “furiously fast and free Wi-Fi,” and all sorts of space-saving furniture, including custom-made fold-up tables and chairs that hang on wall pegs rather than sucking up square footage.
“The target guest is not just defined by age but also attitude,” Sorenson says. “Take me, for instance: I’m 58, and I don’t need a desk in my hotel room. I like the flexibility of Moxy’s bedrooms.”
The other upside to small rooms is that they’re cheap, with rates starting as low as $139, though prices for the first weekend of October were more like $300 a night. You can get an even better deal on a room at the rooftop bar, where the cocktail list features a $99-a-night “crash pad,” Sorenson says. “The price is a nod to the room category’s 99 square feet—they’re meant for those who simply don’t want the night to end.” (A hotel spokeswoman later clarified that rooms actually start at 120 square feet.)
Which it probably won’t, at least not until late: Rockwell Group’s venues include a stunner of a “seafood brasserie” from TAO Group chef Jason Hall and the aforementioned rooftop bars. There's also a rather cheeky mini-golf course adorned with what the hotel says are “life-size animals in flirty poses.” Hey, whatever it takes to get guests to fire up those Instagram accounts. No doubt they’ll be asking you to tag @moxytimessquare between putts.