The GEM Hotel - Chelsea Rating: 3.0 Pearls

Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City

The GEM Hotel

Smack in the middle of Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, this hotel attracts budget-seekers of all stripes: recent college grads, artists looking to survey the neighborhood's hundreds of galleries, groups of girlfriends in town for a shopping spree, mature solo tourists, thirtysomething couples on a weekend getaway. All are looking for (and getting) the same thing: a clean, relatively inexpensive room in a convenient location, plus a few modestly luxurious touches like flat-screen TVs with free Showtime, rainfall showerheads, iHome clock radios with iPod docks, and fresh orchids in the hallways. At these prices, some sacrifices are to be expected: The rooms are small, even for New York, and there's no dedicated concierge, room service, or on-site restaurant or bar. But as a place to lay your head for a few nights, it can often be a solid deal.

The front desk

Service is about at the level you'd expect for a New York budget hotel. Gem is run by a fairly skeletal crew -- you won't, for example, see a doorman out front or a dedicated concierge in the lobby. The front desk handles guests' basic requests, like assistance with hailing a cab. And while the hotel advertises a concierge on its website, suggestions are in fact doled out by the single front desk receptionist. That said, his suggestions were solid -- he obviously knew the area well.

View on a Larger Map

Right in the heart of Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, Gem enjoys the best of both worlds -- it's on a quiet, residential stretch of 22nd Street inhabited by lovely old brownstones, but just around the corner from bustling 8th Avenue with its eclectic selection of midpriced restaurants and bars (many with sidewalk seating come summer).

Running from 14th Street to 34th Street on Manhattan's westside, the largely residential neighborhood of Chelsea is the center of both Manhattan's gay community and, with some 350 art galleries, New York's contemporary art scene. (Just two blocks west of the hotel, the art galleries start.) Chelsea is also a convenient midway point between downtown and midtown -- the West Village is just two subway stops down, and the Empire State Building just one subway stop up.

• Three subway lines (the A, C, E) are just one block away.

A Standard Room

The standard rooms are, at 135 square feet, distinctly small, even for a New York hotel room. There's virtually no room to store your luggage, as the eight-inch wide side table and small white laminate wardrobe can't hold much. (The staff actually offers to stow them in the lobby during your stay.) As the room can start to feel a little cramped after a few days, I wouldn't suggest booking a standard room here for more than a few nights. This is a great place to rest your head after a day exploring the city and that's about it -- most guests know this and treat it as such, leaving early in the morning and not returning till night.

For a mere $20 more, an upgrade to a 195-square-foot business-class room with a full-size desk is worth it. Also, a window with an attractive street view helps make the space feel less cramped -- request a room that looks onto 22nd Street, or you may get stuck with a fairly dark room like mine overlooking the air shaft. (The only catch is that most rooms overlooking 22nd Street only come with full-size beds.)

A few modestly luxurious room amenities attempt to compensate for the limited space and simple fixtures, some more successfully than others. The one-cup coffeemaker with strong Wolfgang Puck coffee comes in handy; but the flimsy waffle-knit robe feels perfunctory. My 32-inch flat-screen offered just 30 channels and no pay-per-view, but the free Showtime and Wi-Fi made are nice perks. The Kohler rainfall showerhead and ionic hair dryer helped elevate the simple shower with plastic dispensers and gray-tile floor up from shower-at-your-local-YMCA status. Unfortunately the only toiletries offered in my room were shower gel and shampoo out of large wall dispensers.)

For the price, the adequately comfy bed here provides a decent enough sleep -- simple 60-40 poly-cotton blend sheets are helped by a pillow-top Serta Sleeper with additional pillow top covering, a down duvet, and five down pillows.

The gym

Free Wi-Fi in the lobby and the rooms. The business center is free too, but amounts to nothing more than a Mac desktop and a Canon printer.

The modest 24-hour gym features some well-maintained StarTrac cardio equipment (including two treadmills, one elliptical, and one bike), an exercise ball, and two flat-screen TVs, but no free weights or strength machines.

Everything -- from the dust-free table tops to the gleaming bathroom fixtures -- looks very clean and well maintained except for a few minor exceptions that won't bother most travelers: what looked like a coffee stain on the bed, and some small mildew spots in the corner of the shower.

Not family-friendly in any meaningful way. It would be virtually impossible to squeeze more than two people into a room here, even if the other bodies are small. The hotel doesn't offer cribs or rollaways -- they wouldn't fit in the rooms. And the location, while convenient to many parts of the city, doesn't offer much for kids (unless they're really into art).

The hotel itself doesn't provide room service or have an on-site restaurant. But guests will find Chelsea to be rich in variety of eateries across the price spectrum.

For an authentic New York breakfast of bagels and lox, try Murray's Bagels on 8th Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets. The front desk receptionist here also regularly refers guests to the 24-hour New Venus Diner on the same block for $10 breakfasts. Honestly, in a few block radius there's everything from a gourmet hot dog joint to a taxidermy-decorated steakhouse to a Venezuelan arepa house.