Bugis is not tourist central, but there's no way it can be described as "desolate": lots of shopping and restaurants, mostly at the lower end of the price spectrum, plus a handful of interesting temples and the nightlife and general quirkiness of Arab St/Kampong Glam within strolling distance. Transportation has also improved now that you can take the recently opened Downtown MRT line straight to eg. Marina Bay Sands and Chinatown. The IC is also a rather nice albeit not uber-luxurious hotel, search for a recent thread about it.

The other obvious option for Hilton is to stay at the Conrad, in the Marina Bay district. I quite like the hotel itself, but the area is a bit of a hotel ghetto, not an awful lot going on at night for example.