Brooklyn is a Hotel "Haven," But Don't Tell Anyone A Lot of Them Are in Gowanus

The Brooklyn hotel boomlet gets another dose of publicity with a NY1 story surveying the scene and taking note of the expanded Brooklyn Marriott, the Gowanus Holiday Inn Express, the Gowanus Comfort Inn and the Hotel Le Bleu as evidence of a developing "haven" for "Outer Borough tourists." (Translation: your mother-in-law from Chicago visiting you in Park Slope that you want to put far enough away that she can't walk over to the apartment.)

We've had our share of fun with these places. It's not because we don't believe that Brooklyn should have hotels--everybody needs a place to stow visitors or to, you know, do whatever one goes to a hotel to do. No, it's the length to which some of these hotels have gone to hide their true location that has caused us great writing joy.

The Holiday Inn, which is so close to the Gowanus that someone with a good arm could get a baseball part of the way there, is the "Park Slope Holiday Inn Express." The Comfort Inn, as we noted last week, claims proximity to Prospect Park and calls itself the "Comfort Inn Brooklyn Bridge" whereas the only bridge to which it is close is the Union Street one.

From the NY1 report:

"We're serving a great need in the neighborhood. We have a lot of people for weddings and first-time grandparents coming to the neighborhood, and a lot of people relocating to Brooklyn, as well,” says Comfort Inn Brooklyn general manager Richard Murphy.

Owners say for several nights this week the 104-room hotel was at 100 percent capacity, even though the area is not exactly touristy, with warehouses and city housing nearby.

"Inside the building is where we excel," says Murphy. "This is where we give our personalized service."

It had never dawned on us, until this very moment, that a hotel could excel outside the building, but we somewhat understand why he would be motivated to say that.

And, then, there is the Hotel Le Bleu, Gowanus' first boutique hotel, which is bound to cause more than one tourist to hyperventilate when the pedestrian reality of Fourth Avenue trumps the bucolic online rendering. Le Bleu, as always, promotes le view from le roof. We wonder how many tourists are going to dig the Gowanus panorama as much as, say, us?