We stayed at the hotel St Marco, and contrary to an earlier reviewer, we found the reception staff charming, help-full and friendly. Yes it is a business hotel , and you don't want a room above the bar on Friday night.( Karaoke night) In comparison to the centre of Parma the rates including breakfast were very reasonable and its only a 10 minute drive to the city centre.To anybody wanting a short trip to savour the flavour of Italy go to Parma it's very friendly wonderfully "Italian" , lots and lots of very good restaurants and bars made better by the fact that the centre is virtually traffic free. We never found a restaurant that served bad food

I don't really have much good to say about this hotel. I can't necessarily say that it was a BAD hotel, but I was harly impressed. I believe it is touted as a business hotel, and we did indeed see a lot of business people there. The rooms are clean but particularly well equipped. Breakfast is included and the food is adequate. The resataurant is overpriced and the food is mediocre. The staff is sufficiently friendly in the restaurant, and stereotypically rude and snobby at the front desk.
If there are two of you staying it may be worth your while to ask for two room keys as the lights/electricity will not work in your room unless you insert your room key in the "control panel" (not uncommon, but it does make it tricky if one of you wants to stay in the hotel to shower or sleep and the other needs to go out).
Don't pull the slip cord in the shower - it's not to change the thermostate outside in the main room - it's an alarm incase you fall. If you pull it you'll get a very irritating alarm that you cannot stop until housekeeping comes along and puts their roomkey in the outside hallway control panel. Again, this is not uncommon in hotels in Italy. We learned the hard way :D
We used Parma as our "base camp" while we toured Northern Italy. If you're going to Italy on vacation I wouldn't recommend this hotel. THere's not much to see or do around the area that is Italian-culture-specific, and you could probably find much better places to stay value for money. If you're travelling to the region on business, then San Marco wouldn't be a bad choice.