We are a family owned company, and I had a tight budget to run an exhibit at the McCormick center...so we chose the Cinatown Hotel Sro. You will find some helpful advice below.

1) Location, Location
a) We stayed at the Chinatown Sro Hotel for a week (7 days). There is no "hotel parking" so if you brought a car, you will be paying $10 a night to park in a supervised parking lot (a 2 min walk). You can however unload and load your car for 10 min outside the hotel.
b) The hotel is less than a 3 min walk from the Red line train station Cermak/Chinatown. You can get on just about any other train to get anywhere you want from here. Fares are $2 each, and only 25c when you ride another train within 2 hrs.
c) Excellent food. You can smell Chinatown before you see it. It smells like sweet and sour chicken and beer. My advice is to go for the resturants with the most god-awful gawdy lookings signs. King Wok is a good choice. Looks terrible on the outside, but upstairs you will be pleasantly surprised. Our theory was of they could afford the sign, they must have customers paying for it. You can also go just up the road to China square , which is a compound full of great resturants. Spoilt for choice.
d) Lower crime rate. The Chinese generally look after their own neighborhood. I felt safer walking in Chinatown at night than in other "dodgy" areas of Chicago.
e) 15 min walk to the McCormick center, you will save $20 a day in cab fares if you choose the healthy route. You can comprimise by grabbing a biscuit from the McDonalds along the way.

2) The Hotel
a) Friendly staff. The staff do speak English, just be patient, and were quite hepful. You will need to request extra towels to be given everyday, as their towels are cheap and Chinese, and soak up very little. Also, you may want to request a second room heater in cold weather (see details further on).
b) The room keys. I still have to figure out how these worked. They are like pieces of tin that slide into the door handles. I have never seen this system before. If you pay by cash there is a deposit required for the room key, but not if you pay by credit card.
c) The hotel internet only works downstairs. "Free wireless" is a joke, and the manager sid that it was becuase his server was too small to handle over 10 users on at one time... why offer it ?
d) This hotel was built for Chinese people. The foyer looks nice, but once in the stairwell or corridor it is another story. They are tiny. I had to contort my body to avoid hitting my head in the stairwells, and it is a real trick with luggage, as there is no elevator. Luckily we were on the first floor.
3) The Rooms
a) VERY basic, I think I had more aminities in my Air Force barraks. The room view was a darn sight better than the two nasty alleys that these two windows fell open to. (I say fell, because neither worked correctly, and they both were very draughty when closed.... use your extra bath towels here!)
b) Heat. (BYOSH) Bring your own space heater. Once is provided, but it is not enough. The hotel is draughty at night. Temps outside were about 32F, and it was pretty chilly inside.
c) The beds are very small. I am 6'6". 250lb, and a completely covered the twin bed. I could not move left or right and my feet stuck out 1 foot over the end of the bed.
d) The bathroom.
Do not place wet towels on the towel rack. The exessive weight will make it pop off the wall.
The showerhead is held by a plastic clamp, and it cannot be positioned to wash your body. The shower nozzle can be removed, however. In cold temps make sure that you dry off while the shower door is shut.
e)TV. You get 7 channels. 2 are so fuzzy they look like snow storms. 2 are in Spanish and 1 in Chinese. So you are left with CNN and ESPN.

The bottom line - If you want a cheap hotel in Chicago, near the McCormick center and you are not going to be bringing your customers back to the place, stay at the Chinatown Sro. It will save you lots of money in the long run. The hotel also makes a super reason to get out. You do not want to stay in your room for anything else other than bathing and sleep and for these two activities, it works as good as any US Army barrack.

Overall the Chinatown hotel got the job done. There are no elevators; i had to climb 3 stories with 2 bags and a backpack. The room internet did not work; but oh well. Check in time is 3pm but my room was not ready until 4:30p. Even then i had to ask; nobody said that it was ready. The room air conditioner worked but it did not produce any really cool air. The attached picture is an actual shot that i took on Sunday, 6/22/08. I was there for some training downtown. Location was great and lots of chinese restaurants nearby.

This is the 2nd time I've stayed there. Very small rooms (standard) and rather large bathrooms, all was clean. I didn't need any help from the front desk so I don't know how good the staff is but they were friendly when I checked in.

The biggest plusses are the price (around $100 including tax) and that the CTA Red Line is only a few minutes away which means that you can be in the loop in less than 10 minutes.

Free coffee, tea, and computers with internet at the ground floor. No food service but there4 are literally 100s of restaurants right outside the door.

Chinatown is a safe neighbourhood but you will get a lot of requests for 'change' if you walk into the area East of the CTA tracks.

Recommended by this Dane but don't expect miracles! Oh, there is no elevator which may be a problem but not for me.

Have a safe trip /Jesper

It's definitely not a Marriott. But some of the best Dim Sum in the midwest is just a couple of blocks away at the Phoenix. And the red line is two blocks away, and where else can you find a hotel in Chicago for under $85 (book direct) tax included. Lousy TV reception and no view, but I'm not spending any time in the room except to sleep, so that's OK with me. IT'S NOT FANCY! Just clean, convenient and cheap.