New York Marriott Marquis — Hotel Review

The New York Marriott Marquis has occupied the same block of Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets since 1985, when both the hotel and the adjacent Marquis Theatre opened as part of the first significant redevelopment of Times Square. Designed by John C. Portman Jr. — the Atlanta architect known for his monumental atrium hotels — the building is 51 storeys and 574 feet tall, with 1,971 rooms rising above a dramatic eight-storey atrium lobby, 12 glass elevator cabs on the exterior of a freestanding concrete core, and 101,000 square feet of meeting and event space. It is one of the largest hotels in New York City and one of the most visited in the United States. The Marquis Theatre, which opened in 1986 and has housed major Broadway productions including Mamma Mia! and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, is built within the hotel’s third floor. At the top of the building, floors 47 and 48 house The View — New York City’s only revolving restaurant, which reopened in February 2025 under Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) after a five-year closure.

Within Marriott Bonvoy the hotel earns at the standard Marriott Hotels & Resorts rate. It is not a luxury tier property, but it is notable for housing Manhattan’s first and East Coast’s largest M Club lounge, which provides Platinum, Titanium, and Ambassador Elite members with a full breakfast buffet, all-day snacks, and evening hors d’oeuvres. No complimentary breakfast is available outside the M Club for lower elite tiers. Marriott uses fully dynamic award pricing; standard room redemptions typically fall in the range of 40,000–60,000 points per night, varying significantly by date and demand — check live availability on Marriott.com before planning any redemption.

Location

The Marriott Marquis is located at the epicentre of Times Square — not near it, but in it. The hotel’s Broadway frontage is flanked on both sides by theatres, and the Marquis Theatre occupies the building’s third floor. For guests attending Broadway shows, the location is genuinely unmatched: many productions are within two or three minutes on foot, and the hotel regularly partners with shows running at the Marquis itself. The immediate environment is intensely commercial and tourist-dense, which is both the attraction and the limitation of this address. Guests seeking quiet residential streets will find Lower Manhattan or the Upper West Side more conducive; guests whose purpose is to be in the middle of everything Times Square offers will find no better-positioned hotel.

Transport connectivity is outstanding. Times Sq—42nd Street is one of the largest subway stations in the system, serving the 1, 2, 3, 7, N, Q, R, W, A, C, and E lines and providing coverage to virtually every part of Manhattan and the outer boroughs. The underground passages connecting the hotel to the station can be used to avoid surface-level Times Square crowds, which is a practical advantage during peak tourist periods. JFK is reachable in approximately 45–60 minutes via the 7 train to the AirTrain connection.

Rooms

The hotel’s 1,971 rooms are distributed across 36 floors above the 8th-floor lobby, with all rooms designed to face either the central atrium or the building’s exterior. This is a critical distinction: atrium-facing rooms look inward over the lobby space and offer no meaningful view of the city. Exterior rooms — and particularly Times Square View rooms on the higher floors — provide the spectacle the hotel’s address implies. Requesting a high-floor exterior room when booking is strongly recommended; atrium-facing rooms on lower floors are a consistent source of disappointment in guest reviews.

Room sizes are approximately 390–430 square feet for standard rooms — respectable for Times Square but not exceptional for the price, and the renovation completed in 2021 updated furnishings, replaced bathtubs with showers in most rooms, and added refrigerators. The most recent renovation cycle updated soft furnishings and technology. Suite categories include Deluxe King Suites with separate living areas, through to the Presidential Suite. The hotel accommodates large groups through family connector configurations and multiple room types. At 1,971 rooms, the operational scale means housekeeping, front desk, and F&B staffing are calibrated for volume rather than personalisation.

One practical note for cash bookings: the hotel charges a mandatory destination fee of $30 per night, returned as an F&B credit usable across hotel restaurants and bars. This fee is waived on Marriott Bonvoy points redemptions, which meaningfully increases the real-terms value of an award stay.

Dining and Bars

The View is the defining dining experience and one of the genuinely compelling reasons to choose this hotel. Closed since 2020, it reopened in February 2025 following a full renovation by the Rockwell Group under the culinary direction of Union Square Hospitality Group — Danny Meyer’s company, which also operates Gramercy Tavern and a number of other acclaimed New York restaurants. The new concept takes the American supper club as its template, with executive chef Marjorie Meek-Bradley overseeing a menu of elevated American classics — shrimp cocktail, crab cake, steaks and chops — alongside nightly live piano music. The 48th-floor bar and lounge rotates every 45 minutes; the 47th-floor dining room rotates hourly, completing a full 360-degree revolution of the Manhattan skyline. Reservations are strongly advised for the dining room; the bar accepts walk-ins from 4pm.

Revel & Rye on the 8th floor serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a more casual bar-and-restaurant setting with an American whiskey-forward menu. The Broadway Lounge on the same floor offers Times Square views through floor-to-ceiling windows with wood-fired pizzas, snacks, and cocktails — a practical option for pre-theatre or casual evenings without booking The View. The Perch, an outdoor terrace on the 8th floor, extends off the Broadway Lounge on both the north and south sides, offering an elevated open-air vantage point eight floors above Times Square. The M Club lounge provides a full hot breakfast buffet for Platinum+ members — a meaningful benefit that avoids the need to pay restaurant prices for breakfast on an extended stay.

Pool and Facilities

There is no pool. The fitness centre on the 23rd floor is well-equipped for a hotel of this size with cardio and strength training equipment. The meeting and event infrastructure is the hotel’s most significant non-room amenity: 101,000 square feet of event space including the 29,000-square-foot Broadway Ballroom (capacity 2,800) and 46 smaller rooms spanning a total of 80,000 square feet. The hotel is one of the largest convention and event venues in Manhattan, which can affect the guest experience on peak event days — the lobby and restaurant areas can be exceptionally busy when multiple large groups are in-house simultaneously.

Marriott Bonvoy — Earning and Elite Benefits