Aura Hotel Brooklyn

About The Hotel

The Aura Hotel at 56 Franklin Avenue is a 4.5-rated (1,272 reviews) boutique hotel in Brooklyn, with modern rooms, contemporary style, a convenient location for the borough and the subway into Manhattan, and a complimentary welcome drink. It is a well-rated, design-minded base—guests praise the modern rooms, the contemporary design, the convenient location, the value, and the friendly service. A boutique hotel rather than a pool or hot-tub property, with any in-room soaking tub a feature to confirm at booking. It is a well-rated, design-led base for travelers seeking a contemporary boutique stay for Brooklyn and the city.

What Guests Are Saying

“Stayed during a winter storm and was surprised with how beautiful the lobby and rooms are. Pictures don’t really do it justice. Heat worked great and beds had nice duvets, comforters, and blankets for a winter stay.” — Tour47233029340, 5 stars

“Came for work in Brooklyn navy yard and this was cheapest 4 star. Stay was great value and I can see why it is highly reviewed” — Sherpa01152140193, 5 stars

“I’ve just returned from a trip to New York. I booked the Aura Hotel Brooklyn via Booking.com as it was reasonably priced, in a good part of Brooklyn and with easy access to Manhattan. It seemed like the ideal place to use as a base for our 4 night trip. However, upon arrival at the hotel at around 6pm on the 7th April it was clear that the photos of the lobby used on Booking.com are not that recent. In reality it looked tired, ageing and not as welcoming as we would have expected. Throughout the check in the receptionist was on her phone conducting a personal video call behind the desk. Yes, she served us and checked us in, but with one eye and some focus on making sure she continued her call. After the check in is when the ongoing challenges started. Despite two card keys per each of the two rooms setup, neither worked on either door. This left us standing outside our rooms unable to enter. Our rooms were a matter of steps (less than 10) to the main reception desk so we returned with our problem. The receptionist wasn’t overly keen to help but gave us a physical key for one room and tried some more keycards for the other room. For the remainder of the duration of the stay one room was entered using the physical key, and the other we consistently needed help from either the reception or the cleaner as our keys still wouldn’t work. Despite this being raised it wasn’t fixed until the last night of our stay. After finally getting entry to our rooms it was then apparent this hotel was very tired, for example the bathroom door handle hanging off, all it needed was to be screwed back in place, but it had clearly been ignored. Also, the lock on the back of the door wasn’t working, we needed to use the chain lock at the top of the door to ensure it was locked (although we knew the keycards weren’t working so someone would have struggled to gain access). In both rooms we found the safe locked open, we reported to reception, but again, this wasn’t fixed throughout our stay and we had to hide our valuables and even take some out with us on a daily basis. One of the safes had its batteries sellotaped in place, so even if it was working it would be risky locking anything in there in case one of the batteries fell out. Time for a wash/shower, and of course, there is no hot water. At this point we reported to reception (again!) and called it a night. After expecting the hot water to be available in the morning it wasn’t the case. We reported it again to reception on our way out for a day in New York. When we arrived back at the hotel later that evening we found that we did have hot water available, but it was unacceptable that we had to wait 36 hours of our stay to gain this. Keycards, safe, hot water, all simple things you expect from any modern hotel, especially one in the USA and at the price point we were paying. In general, the reception staff were poor, poorly trained, not very customer friendly, particularly one young girl who clearly thought that the problems outlined above weren’t her problem to solve and that we were causing trouble by asking, additionally she was also taking personal calls whilst talking to us. Two other receptionists were helpful as much as they could be but it was quite clear they’d been left to sink or swim in their role with very little training. To top things off on our last night, we returned around 6:45pm to find that housekeeping hadn’t been, despite attending every other day before, allowing us to return to unmade beds, dirty towels and refreshments not restocked.” — Chris S., 2 stars

Pros & Cons

Pros:

• A 4.5 across 1,272 reviews—a well-rated boutique hotel
• Modern, contemporary rooms and style
• A convenient location for the subway and the borough
• Design-minded style and good value
• Complimentary welcome drink

Cons:

• A boutique hotel rather than a pool or hot-tub property
• Any in-room soaking tub is a specific room feature—confirm at booking
• A NYC price plus fees
• A compact urban property

The Location

In Brooklyn, convenient to the borough and the subway into Manhattan. You can find more details or book your stay on TripAdvisor.