The staff is unfriendly and unprofessional. If you call with a question or complaint and request to speak to a manager you can plan on having to follow up to get anywhere. Even then all you get is the run around and no real answers.
I would not recommend staying here with all of the other choices out there.

We had booked the hotel quite a few months back for the Thanksgiving weekend. I was a bit nervous since the reviews can be really good or really bad. But our stay was wonderful. The room is small, so I was prepared for that.But we really were not in the room too much with all there is to do in New York. The beds were comfortable, no sign of bed bugs. Our rooms were cleaned and towels switched out every day. Every employee we had we very very helpful and friendly. We felt safe in the hotel, and walking back to it at night. The price seemed to be on the medium to lower end for New York. It is only a few blocks from Time Square, Macy's, Empire State Building, and very close to subways. Highly recommend.

Myself and a mate stayed here the last week of April 2010.
On arrival were were told that the travel agent booked us a king bed and not a double room as we requested when booking and made sure it was a double, as 2 blokes. the guy on reception was not moving on it, he said there will be a double room available on the tuesday, this was sunday when we came. he also advised us that it will be an extra 20 dollars per night in the double room. in fairness we were not impressed with his attitude and inflexibility. nothing we could do so we jst grinned and beared it. then to make things worse, our room was in the basement, beside the breakfeast room and the ice machines and vending machines. Pure pissed off afer paying 500euro each for this crap.
The room was serioulsy small, no room for our suitcases, a major squash round the king bed. pure noisy the following morning frm the machines outside our room, this should not be a room it should be a storage room, so not impressed.
After one night in that room we asked the girl on reception if ther is any chance we could change room to a double, she checked and said yes, one is available and they are jst cleaning it and after that we can change room. Obviously the guy on reception the day b4 jst cudnt be bothered informing us of this.
After we chaged rooms it was fine, room was ok for ny, not alot of space to move about, have stayed in better ones in ny. had no problem after we changed rooms, the girl on reception was very nice and helpful, she let me do check my online banking on her pc and let us use the phone when we neede to, at no cost, she couldnt be more nice.
Love ny, done all the usual haunts and sites, grand location, great italian restaurant a few mins walk away, great food, and u get a discount when u mention u are staying in the gem hotel, the girl on reception gave us a card for the restaruant.
What more can i say, the hotel was fine after the inital ignorance, our stay was more pleasant chatting away to the nice girl on reception, whos name i cant remember lol, long culry dark hair ha ha.

Booked this hotel through booking.com the hotel was rated 3 stars I say its a one star hotel is more like it. The room was very small no room for our luggage .. We stayed their for 2 nights the second night we were their we didn't get any house keeping when we got back at night the room looked the same it was dirty. Its overpriced plus the hidden fees the don't tell you about until you review your bill like $2.00 a day for the safe in our room which we didn't use!! it was a horrible stay it was a motel more than a hotel. The only good thing was location it wasn't too bad few blocks away from time square . never go there again that's for sure!!