One of the top hotels in Boston?
There was no shortage of magazines lying about our room at the Eliot extolling the virtues of the hotel. Travel and Leisure listed it among a handful of hotels it deemed the best in Boston. Really? My husband I cannot concur. In our experience, a good hotel has a defined and relatively roomy lobby. There is almost no lobby in the long narrow entrance to the Eliot: In and down a few steps to check-in and then up elevators inches from reception. The only public spaces in the hotel are in the restaurants. We tried to get into Uni, which is acclaimed, but found that it closes at 10 pm even on evenings when a Red Sox game lets out around 10:15. The room: Ours was rather ordinary, actually, particularly in its bureaucrat beige color scheme. It was a suite, which is almost always good news. Ours, however, overlooked the hotel compressors and the brick building next door that had its own compressors on display. No point opening the drapes. There was literally nothing good to see and very little light available to the room anyway. A little space off to the side looked like a small kitchen with sink and counters, until we realized that this "kitchen" did not have a coffee maker or a pot for boiling water. All it had were wine glasses, an ice bucket and a pay as you go, ordinary as sin mini-bar. The bed: no reading lights above --and this was a very dark room indeed --and a mattress well-dented by every body that came before ours. Clearly, all had slept on the side nearest the table holding the only light. And now the climax: the internet. Internet access is not free at the Eliot, which is itself ridiculous, but we paid the minimal amount to AT&T to use our computers in the room, per the instructions. After getting a receipt online we got no internet service. We called the front desk. They put us in touch with their technical support people who could not resolve the problem. We eventually gave up on accessing the internet in our room. Service is supposedly great at the Eliot. Really? Under the circumstances, wouldn't it make sense for management to send up a laptop or offer us free use of the business center? No such luck. Here's our advice: if you want a very good boutique hotel experience in Back Bay, check into the Lenox Hotel. It's warm, outgoing, charming, cozy and has a great bar in the lobby that is frequented by locals. That's where we're going next time.