meaning - "I went to the hotel you were staying at" vs. "you stayed at"

Is there a difference in meaning between these two sentences?

1. I went to the hotel you were staying at when you were in New York.



2. I went to the hotel you stayed  at when you were in New York.

Perhaps one reading is that they went to the hotel where their friend was (still) staying, but another is that they went to the hotel where their friend had (previously) stayed. The use of the past tense were staying at when you were in New York would seem to mean that the friend was no longer there.

With I went, which represents a definite action at a point in time, does it matter if the stay at the hotel is described with the past continuous you were staying or not? Is one more correct than the other?

Answer

Both are acceptable grammatically.

In the first, the object clause is written in the imperfect tense (past continuous). In the second it is written in the past tense.

Neither example can possibly imply that the person described as 'you' is still staying at the hotel. But the first could well imply that 'you' were still staying at the hotel at the time 'I went'. But with the 'when you were in New York' clause included, it does not seem possible that I could have gone to the hotel when you were still there.

It does not matter that the principal verb in the sentence (went) is in the past. The action of 'I went' has nothing whatever to do with the tense applicable in the object clause. One could equally well say:
'I went to the hotel where you will be staying when you are in New York', or 'I will go to the hotel where you were staying...'

I think both sentences mean almost exactly the same thing. The second is perhaps more applicable to a very short stay, where there were also stays at other hotels.

The French would always use the imperfect (imparfait) for this type of thing, but in English you have the choice.