HotelChatter || Paris Hotels Guide: Budget Stays

Our special Paris Hotel Guide correspondent Monica Guy is back with her picks for Paris on the cheap based on both travel personality and neighborhoods.

Paris is famous for its luxury, design, and boutique hotels. But if your budget's anything like mine, the Paris hotel you're staying at is probably less a boutique hotel than a common-or-garden magasin, or if you're lucky a department store. Less a design hotel than a mouldy cardboard box pre-fabricated fifty years ago in China.

Because most hotels in Paris are Very Expensive. And the ones that aren't tend to be Very Poor.

There's a light at the end of the dark and dingy passageway, however. Hold my hand and follow me for a tour of the best budget hotels in Paris.

Le General

The perfect place if you're ...

A) A hip and trendy 20-something with a hole in the pocket of your Armani trousers:
Pull off your sunglasses and stroll into any one of the three excellent LGH hotels in the edgy up&coming Republique and Bastille areas of town--Le Quartier Republicque Marais, Le Quartier Bastille Faubourg and Le General.

All three are sleek boutique hotels that do away with the frills and cut down the price. Clean and calm, good-looking staff, and all the knobs and whistles including Wi-Fi - I'd stay in one of these a thousand times over the shinier but pricier boutique hotels in the centre.

Hotel de Hollande

B) A party-loving shopaholic with a hole in the pocket of your shiny handbag:
The Hôtel de Hollande isn't in Holland, thankfully, but slap between the neon-lit districts of Montmartre and Pigalle and the, er, neon-lit shopping streets of the Grands Boulevards. Ignore the guff on the website about huge rooms (unless they decided to show me their teeniest tiniest one) but it is cheap enough, clean enough and stylish enough to win at least the cut-price silver trophy at my Paris Budget Hotel prize-giving.

Hotel de Lille

C) A quietly stylish short-breaker intent upon no-frills sightseeing:
Sightseeing land - the Seine, the Louvre, the Orsay Museum, the Champs Elysées - is not fertile picking for good budget hotels. There are plenty of cheap hotels, but they're also cheap on the cleaning products and staff training. Except for the Hôtel de Lille, a tiny haven of art-deco calm slap bang in the centre sharing a road with the Orsay Museum.

Some of the bedspreads wouldn't look odd at your nan's and the wallpaper can be frightening, but it's scrupulously clean, has a top underground breakfast room, and the staff know how to smile and be polite at any time of day or night. Trust me, that's not normal in a budget hotel. Book in advance - there are only 14 rooms so getting in here's a bit of a competition.

D) Deaf, dumb, blind and stupid to boot:
Pick a hotel within a radius of 12 miles around the Gare du Nord.

Other swingin' budget hotel areas:
· Anywhere on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, rue St Maur or rue Oberkampf will be easy on the pocket but often easy on the cleaning too - things are looking up round here, so watch this space.
· Montmartre and Pigalle are good spots for budget hotels and motels if you're after a bit of red-light fun and japes.
· The Marais used to be a great place for budget travellers, but it's put on a new pair of shiny trousers and there's no hole in the pocket of these. If you're really on a budget and not just pretending, stay in the Republique/Oberkampf area instead and just walk down the street.
· You're all too old for hostels, I know, but I can't resist recommending the Peace and Love hostel overlooking the Canal St Martin in one of the more fun bits of northeast Paris. Take a 2-bed room to yourself and pretend it's a hotel so you can enjoy the cheap beer in the small, noisy bar downstairs, the hippy staff and clientele, and the edgy canal-side Point Ephémère bar. I'll see you there.
· The Latin Quarter's extending south into the 13th arrondissement and bars and cheaper hotels are - I'm told - starting to open up down there. Great if you want to be near all the touristy fun.
· Stay away from anywhere in the south, west or southwest of the city unless your budget is as big as the Queen of Sheba's.