Sheraton Commander Hotel

“My favorite hotel in Boston/Cambridge”

Hands-down my favorite hotel to stay when I'm in Boston/Cambridge: Convenient, congenial location right near public transportation, great restaurants and shops and Harvard Yard. Rooms are always clean and comfortable, service is impeccable. Parking is right next door. We'll be back!

“Sheraton Commander (ret’d)”

This hotel’s eponym greets you as you enter and I can’t help but mull over the symbolism of past glory; wholly appropriate for this hotel but for reasons Marriott Bonvoy unintended. The Sheraton Commander is fine (damning with faint praise entirely deliberate), but I can’t help but think that it mi… more

This hotel’s eponym greets you as you enter and I can’t help but mull over the symbolism of past glory; wholly appropriate for this hotel but for reasons Marriott Bonvoy unintended. The Sheraton Commander is fine (damning with faint praise entirely deliberate), but I can’t help but think that it might once have been a fine hotel that has lost its modern way. We have stayed here multiple times visiting family in Cambridge and it never fails to deliver a sense of failure. Ostensibly, it’s a decent enough place to stay. But scratch a little beneath the surface, it becomes apparent how thin the veneer is. Let’s start with the positives. The rooms are a really good size and, despite an abundance of browns and beiges, not unpleasant. The bed is supremely comfortable and being of bowling green proportions guaranteed this guest an uninterrupted and unentangled night’s sleep. Despite facing the street, the hotel was quiet at night for us, with plenty of windows and light to welcome an overcast and damp morning. The other highlight is its position; commanding access to the delights of Cambridge in both directions and standing sentinel to a bustling Harvard Square. They provide valet parking at what seems like an exorbitant $45 a night, but presumably that’s the price of convenience.  A good hotel, as with all things hospitality-related, is defined by the details. Details that reveal the consideration that has been given to the guests’ experience. Whilst not quite subliminal, they are often subtle and may only be recognised in retrospect, or when combined to paint a picture of ease and enjoyment. All too often they lie in staff interactions, service instincts and atmosphere. At the Commander they are all too salient by their absence which leaves notes of sourness in the aftertaste. Other people may label these little gripes pedantic (probably guilty as charged) but they add up to a sense of corporate indifference, and dare I say it, complacency. The checking in process was perfunctory - pleasant enough, but formal. The lobby is entirely atmosphere and personality-free and contrasted startlingly to the experience of the Charles Hotel, a local alternative. The aforementioned room had those ubiquitous coffee machines so prevalent in American hotels, which contaminate every drink (tea for example) with an overpowering essence of ground coffee. The main water on offer exemplifies another American idiosyncrasy - purified water - charged at $4. This is nothing other than glorified tap water, paraded as mineral water, but already open and warm. There is a one quarter litre bottle of mineral water per room. Really? For two people? How difficult would it be to provide decent, sufficient, cold, unopened water? There is no fridge or mini bar, so even self-sourced water deviates to the mean room temperature. We arrived late and wanted a snack. A call to reception at 2130 for the room service menu was met with a rather intransigent ‘computer says no’ moment, amusingly blamed on the pandemic of some four years earlier! We were warned that the kitchens shut at 9.45pm and if we had the temerity to be hungry outside convenient hours, alternatives would have to be sought. There are numerous other telling details: a lack of hooks in the bathroom, a shower adjustment knob that falls to adjust, a lack of kettle (provided once asked for), room lighting that first requires fumbling around in the dark to master, an air-conditioning unit that feels and sounds like it’s about to take off, lifts that take an eternity to arrive and elevate and a host of other little grievances. And so back to the eponymous commander, it feels like this hotel has had its day and is trading on former glories. In a local diner for breakfast (see review) a frail and aged lady was on the adjacent table. I was a little surprised to see upon her legs a tattoo that proclaimed ‘Corona virus survivor’. It occurred to me that this was a claim that could not be echoed by the Sheraton Commander.

less