I recently stayed at the Hyatt Place Boston Braintree. Traveling with my wife and daughter, I wanted more space and they don’t have suites on offer. (Hyatt Place properties are exempt from Globalist upgrades in any case.) So I asked my Hyatt Concierge to contact the property about confirming connecting rooms in advance. It’s only a category 2 property, so this was affordable, and my concierge confirmed in writing that they agreed.

• Two rooms doesn’t make sense unless they’re connecting with a four year old
  
• And I didn’t want the three of us squeezing into one room. This is especially so since I get up early and don’t want to wake my daughter working.

I checked into the hotel and found it overrun with teenage sports teams. There were adults out front tailgating, and downing alcohol from full sized bottles.

There was one person working the desk and a line of people. When it was my turn I learned that they’d screwed up. Though check-in took awhile, with kids interrupting for staff help because they’d thrown their shoes onto the roof, I learned that:

• They blocked one of my rooms, but not both. The connecting room beside it was taken by another guest.
  
• There were no more connecting rooms available. The hotel was sold out, and all the pairs had at least one room checked into already.

We were stuck. It was late, past my daughter’s bed time. We took the one room, and I was promised that a manager would call me that evening, or the next day. No call ever came.

I found a hotel room with hair on the bathroom floor. There was no more housekeeping on site. And since I wasn’t on the top floor, and kids were running around late into the night, there was pounding on the ceiling above.

Following up with my concierge, she reached out to the hotel who told her they could not accommodate me because my early check-in meant the connecting rooms weren’t available yet. I checked in shortly before 9 p.m. That made my blood boil. I laid out the issue, and the concierge went back to the hotel.

I heard from the General Manager who seemed to think I was made whole simply because I wasn’t being charged for the stay (they didn’t hold me to checking into the second room that they did not provide). Nothing else but a return of the awards was offered.

Between the commotion, the lack of cleanliness, and the failure to deliver the committed rooms – compounded by the refusal to take ownership of the issue – I consider this to be my worst Hyatt stay in the sixteen years I’ve had top tier status with the chain. Maybe that points to how good my stays have been, or that I usually am very careful vetting where I stay.

Hyatt Place offers an inconsistent product. I much like their new builds in the limited-service segment, but their converted AmeriSuites are awful.

This property, though, is actually a conversion. It dates back to 1961 and was a Sheraton with a castle-like design that went from 374 rooms down to 204 rooms, with part of the property making way for shopping next door, and opened in 2012. (It was once the Sheraton Tara and Sheraton Braintree.) It closed in late 2019, and re-opened after renovations in May 2021. The physical plant was fine as far as it goes – the problem was multiple failures by the people there.