Four stars for the property, minus a star for the service
The Back Bay Hotel offers significant aesthetic pleasures:
- fancy Frette linens
- plush bathrobes
- no slippers, but who's that picky?
- small rooms, but it IS Boston
- across the street from one of my favorite restaurants in Boston
- walking distance from the Financial District, commuter rail, insurance alley and a multi-city fitness club
The only area where it is lacking is its policies. I can't even knock the service because it seemed to me that the staff genuinely wanted to help and were not permitted to do so.
At issue: I had dinner at a wonderful (if pricey) restaurant and the food was so good I accepted the leftoveres they packed up for me. The Back Bay Hotel has refrigerators in the room that were more than large enough to accomodate the leftover food. Having stayed at many other hotels, including most that didn't have microwaves in the room, I expected to be able to heat up anything I put in the microwave. Many hotels accomplish this by bringing (yeah, I know) microwaves to the room any time a guest requests one. Other hotels have food heated up by room service. The Back Bay Hotel allows no provision for this possibility whatsoever. Believe me, I tried. I even asked if I could heat my food in the employee break room and to his credit, the poor associate who answered the phone wanted to do it but was told that it was against company policy.
In the end, I had to go back to the restaurant where I purchased the food (which fortunately was across the street) to reheat the food but it was a fool's errand and a colossal waste of my time. When I returned to the hotel and requested utensils and a napkin so I could enjoy my inventively reheated meal, I was assured that someone would bring silverware to my room. Fifteen minutes later someone did show up with silverware but you can imagine my food wasn't as hot as when I made the request. I even offered to get the utensils myself but was assured that utensils were en route ASAP.
It was a miserable experience for something that seemed so simple.