Hotel Stays: The Rockaway Hotel + Spa

New Yorkers love to talk about getting out of the city for a weekend getaway whenever possible, but one of the easiest getaways possible is just south of JFK Airport.

Sure, New York City isn’t known for its beaches the way Los Angeles is, but there are a few good ones if you know where to look. And one of the most enjoyable ones is Rockaway Beach.

The Rockaway Hotel and Spa opened a few years ago, and there’s nothing in the area quite like it. Just a couple blocks from an NYC Ferry terminal, you can get from Wall Street to the beach in an hour—literally. (You can also take the subway by taking the A train to the end and then there’s a shuttle line.)

There are a few reasons to stay here. The first being the most obvious based on the information above in that this is a hotel two blocks from the beach, which is only an hour from Manhattan—a much easier trip than the traffic jams all the way to the Hamptons.

Second, if you have a long layover at JFK, or perhaps an early morning flight, you can come here the day before and enjoy a day at the beach or the pool and outdoor club onsite at the hotel.

The pool area is quite lovely and there’s a covered outdoor restaurant and bar area with food from breakfast until late night. You can even get just a day pass for the pool without staying at the hotel. They also host a lot of live music events and concerts throughout the summer.

Third, the hotel is both family-friendly and dog-friendly, making it an easy getaway when it’s hard to travel anywhere else with either kind of party.

There is also a spa onsite, which adds to the getaway feel. They have the basic spa services, like facials and massages. The only drawback is that it’s quite cramped in the underground space where it’s located.

And the lockers are finicky—I didn’t hear the attendant read off the code when I got there, and when I got back to my locker after the treatment, I put the wrong code in twice. It immediately prevented me from being able to reenter the code for 10 minutes, which is a long time to wait around just for a spa locker when you want to leave. (And there’s not much space to stand in the closet where the lockers are located.)

The room rates can be hit or miss—anywhere from $180 to $550 depending on when you’re booking and how much in advance. After all, this hotel is super close to JFK—about a 20-minute drive tops, so they’re bound to get a lot of guests who need somewhere last minute. And this is a much nicer option than your average airport hotel.

That said, the rooms are small. The room I stayed in—albeit with a queen-size bed—was possibly the tiniest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in within New York City, which is really saying something as I’ve stayed in some tiny rooms here in the past.

There was also no coffee maker in the room, a travesty but I survived.

There is a café onsite (separate from the pool bar/restaurant as well as another bistro/bar open at night), which has a fab (and very healthy) menu. But they don’t let you charge to the room, so you have to pay separately.

So I bought coffee the afternoon before and just kept it for the following morning. (No, there was no fridge in the room but I’ve consumed worse than 16-hour old coffee.)

There is a yoga studio and classes available to guests, technically across the street but still part of the hotel. But there is no gym, and when I asked, there is no plan to add a gym of any kind. I stayed there in summer, so I had no problem running with Dash along Rockaway Beach, which was lovely. But given this is a year-round hotel, I found that a bit strange as it won’t be pleasant to run outside in February.

Outside of the rooms, all of the common areas and social spaces were really beautiful. It’s a very art-forward hotel; the lobby is a living museum and the installations and paintings are swapped out regularly with new art.

And the rooftop bar is one of a kind in the area, with breathtaking views of the beach and as well as the city skyline in the distance. Also I love watching planes take off and arrive, and there’s nowhere better in New York for that than the rooftop bar here.