Before staying at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, I was familiar with Ian Schrager’s Manhattan creations, including The Royalton and Hudson.

As a frequent visitor to the city, I also have a minimum expectation from its top hotels: when I pay a certain sum – on this occasion, as a full-paying guest, $525 per night (not including $73.72 daily taxes) for the bottom-rung Superior – I want service, whether a hotel is hip or not. Schrager appears to agree. “I want this hotel to be known for the service, not the visuals,” he says in a press release.

So I was hopeful when, in mid-October, I arrived to spend three nights. There seemed much to recommend the hotel, which opened on August 8. This time, though, there’s no Philippe Starck, the pairing for which the hotelier is best known. Instead, Schrager has turned to the painter Julian Schnabel.

Since 1925, the Gramercy Park hotel has been known as a clubhouse for café society; Humphrey Bogart was married here and everyone from Babe Ruth to Joe Strummer have drunk at the bar. Using Schnabel was inspired, his talents evidently influenced by the hotelier’s experience as well as Schrager’s director of design and architecture, Anda Andrei.

The results are exciting. They include a lobby with darkened leather chairs, reclaimed wood pillars, rough plaster walls, a beamed ceiling, red velvet wingbacks, a black-and-white Moroccan tiled floor and an original Schnabel above the fire.

The adjoining bars are predictably cool. They include the Jade Bar and the larger Rose Bar, which after 10pm requires an advance reservation even from hotel residents. Interiors combine Vermeer blues, rose and green silk velvets with original paintings (Schnabel, Warhol and Basquiat), rich reds and browns.

There’s also a gym, small spa, meeting spaces and a rooftop terrace (opening date unconfirmed).

I found only two problems with the design. There are the bare lightbulbs on each room’s ceiling, which, in the smallest room category, make you feel like you’re sleeping in a cell. And also, a problem with the bathroom, again apparently confined to the smallest rooms. To fit my two modest washbags on the shelf space available, I had to remove the bathroom décor and place it on the floor. I almost lost all my make-up to the loo.

The larger suites, of course, aren’t pinched at all. So don’t scrimp; the Loft Rooms at $615 strike a much more pleasing balance between space and price. Some of the higher-priced rooms also have views on to Gramercy Park, the city’s only private park (all guests have access).  

When I arrived on a cold autumn night, there was no one in sight to help me with my bags. The receptionist checked me in quickly, for which I was grateful. She hadn’t thought to ask but the journey had been hell – a five-hour delay at Heathrow. She told me where to find my room. Sure, there was another client whose bags were stacked up on a trolley but there were also three staff to the two of us. I was exhausted. Only when I asked did someone eventually take the luggage from my hand.

Then it all started to go wrong. The next morning, I left the hotel after coffee in bed and returned at 7pm to find that my room had been serviced but the dirty tray – plus my cup, complete with wrinkled, 12-hour skin – remained.

Another evening, I took a glass from the fold-down minibar and helped myself to cranberry juice. The following night I returned to find my room had been serviced. I pulled a glass from the minibar. The vessel, sticky with red juice, was the same unwashed item I had used the previous evening – replaced by housekeeping. When I was checking out, another guest was asking to speak with management. It was past 3pm and his room still hadn’t been cleaned.

But let’s get over housekeeping and the receptionist who, despite being corrected, repeatedly called me the wrong name – three times, in fact, in one conversation.

A doorman, however, should familiarise himself with basics. I came, I went, for three nights and three days, in and out, morning and evening, sometimes rushing for a taxi, on occasion left to find my own because there was no one there to help. On my final night, a familiar figure stopped me as I returned. It was one of the doormen, whom I recognised. He asked if my name was on the guest list. “No,” I said, “I’m staying at your hotel and have been for the last two nights.” With these prices, to call these teething problems would be kind.

When I called room service that first morning, they said breakfast wasn’t included in my room rate. On my last day, after spending up to $40 a morning on à la carte orders, I discovered a temporary space in the hotel serving complimentary continental breakfasts. Since no one had told me about this, I’d done my early morning meetings at the Royalton. Besides, there I could have a spinach omelette; at the Gramercy I was informed there was “no spinach available on the entire East Coast”.

“No one really seems to care – that’s what really bothers me,” said the incensed guest as I was leaving. Frankly, I suspect that if Schrager could stay incognito, he’d be equally appalled. This can’t be what he wants from his new venture.

Sophy Roberts writes the Travelista column for How  to Spend it magazine and is  the editor-at-large of  Departures magazine

Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA. Tel: +1 212-920 3300; fax: +1 212-673 5890; www.gramercyparkhotel.com. Rooms from $525 to $2,500, excluding breakfast and taxes