Royalton Suites

Far more expensive than a similar size room in NYC. No parking near the hotel, and surprise: cash only for the parking! Pillows were awful, no phone to the front desk. No elevator. Was awoken numerous times, the first at 11:45 am by loud voices in the next room. When we yelled to quiet down, a voice yelled back «I’m the night manager and I’m explaining to this guest!» What a jerk — the proper answer would’ve been «I’m so sorry I disturbed you.» After that, there was drunken yelling in the alley below for the next two hours, then beer bottles being dumped in the trash, then at 3 AM a garbage truck collected the bottles, another garbage truck at 6 AM. I had to be on my feet all the next day at a convention, I never really recovered from the interrupted sleep — I never did recover, and as a result could not go out for my birthday that night.
We decided to have breakfast at the hotel, the chef was sitting in the dining room slouched in a chair and texting. There were no hash browns which were listed on the menu, no juice, and some sort of instant coffee. We practically ran out.
The Royalton is in a classic old building, the rooms are neat and well designed. The shower is powerful and plenty hot, and the day manager Bethany was a huge help and very pleasant. But just too many stupid things about this place to make me ever make me consider returning. I couldn’t wait to get home.
Do yourself a favor –go somewhere else, sleep in your care, you’ll get a better night’s sleep.

The front desk is undergoing some renovations so we entered the building and found ourself in a mostly empty reception area with cracked plaster and a sheet covering the door leading into the back. I’m not going to knock a place for doing a little construction to improve themselves, especially when they had a small sign that stated «please excuse our appearance while we renovate».
The woman at the front counter was very nice and walked us to our room after offering to carry our bags. It’s an old building with no elevator so we had to plod up three flights of stairs to the 4^th floor. I’m usually a stairs guy, myself, so you’ll get no complaints out of me for that, but if you don’t like stairs, then don’t bother. For that same reason, it’s not handicap accessible.
The room was a standard hotel room size with a couple of pieces of modern (twisty and metally) furniture and bright orange walls that need a little bit more decoration. We had a room in the back of the building so we traded in a view of Newbury street for a surprisingly very quiet night. The quiet was very much appreciated by the light sleeper sharing the bed with me.
I do have two fairly major complaints about this place. The first is that our bathroom didn’t have a door. It was just a sheet pulled across the entry way. The bathroom is tucked in the back of the room, but a little more privacy would’ve been nice. The girlfriend remarked that it was a good thing that we hadn’t just started dating. The second complaint I have is about the fireplace that they advertise on their webpage. We didn’t notice this until the night before so we never had the chance to get our hopes up, but their webpage claims that each room has a fireplace. Technically this is true. There was a fireplace in our room. The only problem was that it’s not a functioning fireplace. It makes sense as it is an old building and you don’t want your guests having the opportunity to burn the place down, but you can’t advertise a fireplace if it doesn’t actually work. That’d be like a sports bar bragging about their 2 dozen 42″ plasma tvs that they don’t bother to plug in.
Would I go back? Yeah, probably, if the price is right. We had a groupon for the night and if we see another deal I wouldn’t mind snagging it. But there are a lot of other options to stay the night in Boston and I’d probably look elsewhere.

We just spent a couple nights at this hotel. After reading a few bad reviews, I thought I could help shed some light on this interesting hotel/​motel. 1) This is a converted brownstone, 3 floor hotel with a total of 10 rooms 2) Yes, there is just one receptionist, and yes the reception is quasi located in the restaurant on the first floor. 3) No elevator. Provided these minor inconveniences will not ruin your initial impression, we found this hotel to be surprisingly convenient and comfortable. We stayed in room #10 on the 4^th floor. The room was huge, like a 1 bedroom back bay apartment with a plush king sized bed and 3 couches. The décor was eclectic with personality. A funky glass chandelier hung from the ceiling. The bathroom had beautiful glass tiling. Overall the room itself is 3 out of 5 stars. We rated this 4 because of the unbeatable location. You cannot beat the location of this hotel, period. If you are in Boston to relax and chill in your hotel room, this is not the place. No phone to call the front desk. No room service. No frills. But if you’re in Boston to shop, have dinner, drinks at Bukowski’s, grab a slice of Lil Stevie’s and stumble home, then this hotel will serve you well. Bottom line, would stay there again in a heart beat.