Why are hotels so expensive now, and why are the cheap ones so bad?

For Skift’s annual company meeting in New York, Rafat Ali tries to put the participants in Manhattan hotels. Last year, his team scoured the city for reasonable rates, but came up empty. Each room cost hundreds of dollars, so all but one of the attendees were sent across the river, to New Jersey. The last-minute guest got stuck by the Lincoln Tunnel, in a modest property charging luxury prices during the popular fall tourism season.