we finished a two week holiday here for 2 nights after spending 8 nights at the Hotel Beresford near Union Square, then 3 down the coast in Monterey.
Basically, it's a shame. The Art is great, location good, price good, and it's 'funky' - you will remember staying here. But - The room smelt of sweat, and smoke. We had rooms with no bathroom but that was ok because the shared showeroom was clean, so why was the room so bad? Don't know. It's up to the owners to keep an eye on this. It could be really excellent as a different, unique memorable place to stay, but i would say -
A couple of nights only, not for kids, not for oldies, can be a bit noisy at night and be open minded.
We did enjoy it, but a hotel of any size, location, star rating etc should get its basics right - cleanliness.

We reserved a room at the Hotel des Arts after seeing it recommended in a New York Times article. We were a little apprehensive about it. After all, what can you expect for $99 a night in San Francisco?
We were very pleased with our experience. The room was clean, quiet, and comfortable. The location was great. And the breakfast was a plus, with good coffee and muffins, bagels, and yogurt.
After staying at so many cookie-cutter hotels with the same trite pictures on the walls, it was a pleasure to stay in a room that had been spray-painted by a New York graffiti artist and to see work by other young artists in other parts of the hotel.
We would most definitely stay there again.

The hotel was situated very conveniently for china town and union square. We had the room decorated by jet martinez, It was our first choice and it was lovely! apart from the decor everything was simple neat and clean. The breakfasts were the best we had in san francisco. This was a charming, convenient, neat, wonderful hotel - I will be advising everyone I know to stay there! Its great!

We recently spenty 2 nights at the Hotel des Arts in San Francisco. The location is very convenient. We knew it would be an adventure and
either you like the art or you do not like it. Ok, we did not like the art in our room that much, but that was part of the fun or risk factor. What we did not like though, is the rather untrained and unfriendly staff at the reception (please read the previous reviews and you get exactly the description how we felt treated), this does not include the cleaning ladies who were really nice and friendly! The hotel is not very well kept and reminds more of a hostel than a hotel. I do not understand how such a great idea of exposing art from different artists (we still love the idea!) also unfortunately implies that the hotel is rather run-down? That was the biggest disappointment as the rooms were rather shabby (beds were ok tough!). Watch out when onloading your luggage, you have to park in front of the hotel entrance door and not in the designated parking spots on each side. We had our car there for 5 minutes and got a 60 USD fine.