The Liberty, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Boston — Hotel in Boston

We checked in to the Liberty Hotel on Monday August 14th, and checked out on Thursday August 17th. We have been wanting to stay here for quite some time. Super cool hotel -- The location is great, and the lobby is beautiful. I loved the set-up of the mini-bar and the ability to have a drink / snacks at the tables around the lobby area. The rooms were decent, but nothing special considering they advertise themselves as "luxury hotel."

Upon check-in, we were greeted by a young man at the front desk with a beard. Didn't catch his name, but seemed like a nice guy. He was very short with welcoming us and didn't mention a thing about the hotel restaurants / bars and the various amenities offered (made no mention of where the fitness center was, room service that was available, what hours the bars and restaurants were open, etc.). Being a "luxury" hotel, I found this quite odd. Usually you are greeted with a smile, and the front desk will mention the restaurants / bars, what's available to guests, etc. He basically just told us what room we were in, and how to get to the elevator. That's it. I also noticed that most of the guests were being offered glasses of champagne at check-in. My wife and I were not. I thought this was disrespectful and rude once I realized that every other guest was receiving a complimentary glass. I asked another member of the hotel staff about this and he clarified that usually all guests are offered champagne at check-in. Maybe he just didn't like us ? Not sure, as I was very friendly when we greeted him.

The room -- The pillows were garbage. Had hardly any substance / filling in them. The bed wasn't that comfortable. Again, for a "4-Star Luxury Hotel," I expected a better bedding situation. When you pay $550-700 per night at a hotel, there is a level of expectation you have vs. a hotel that is $100-300 per night. The shower area was super super small. Hard to even bend over or move around much in it. Again, for a luxury hotel you think the showers would be a bit bigger and more comfortable to maneuver in.

Here is the best part -- When I got home I noticed a charge for $37.88 on my credit card. I called and asked the manager what this was for and was told it was because we had left unopened cans and bottles from the mini fridge outside of the fridge. We got multiple bottles of water from the front desk staff during our stay, and needed to create room in the mini fridge to store them. This is standard practice for us at hotels -- we usually load up on waters from a local grocery store and/or front desk, and put them in the fridge. I have never been charged for leaving the room beverages out of the fridge while keeping our bottles of water cold inside the fridge. They pack the already-small refrigerators with these cans and bottles, so there is no room to store your own drinks inside. When I created room to keep water, they charged us for "changing the temperature" of the drinks inside by taking them out. This is probably the most ridiculous and unexpected charge I have ever received from a hotel. The woman manager from the front desk (who I called at 6:30 PM on 8/21/23) said that this was their policy and despite no one letting us know of this policy, there is no way she would refund us for the charge. She gave me the email for the CLINK restaurant staff instead, and pushed the problem on to them instead of taking matters in to her own hands and simply refunding the charge.

I may come off as "bitching" or "complaining" in this review, but it is mostly because of how expensive it is to stay at this hotel, and how they advertise themselves as luxury with exemplary service. If I am paying $100-300 per night for a place, I don't usually make a big deal about these kinds of things. But when you're going to charge as much as The Liberty does, you better back it up with exquisite customer service and treat your guests with respect and kindness. I just felt that overall they kind of treated us like trash, and didn't go out of their way to create an amazing...

This review is intended to reflect my experience at The Liberty Hotel on 1/18/25.

I hosted a 30th birthday celebration at Clink at The Liberty Hotel on 1/18. the overarching way that the staff at the Liberty Hotel and Clink treated me and my guests quite frankly ruined a milestone birthday for me.

On 12/20/24 I contacted the Food & Beverage director for Clink, Amira, inquiring about securing space for a buyout on the18th. It took a subsequent 3 emails and 2 weeks of follow up on my end before Amira answered me to secure the space, and take my credit card information for the buyout. I have never experienced a single person or entity take so long to accept the money I was trying to give them. Outside of securing the space, I had one request which was for the event to start at 8PM. On 1/5 I received an email from Amira confirming that they were “looking forward to having [us] on 1/18 at 8PM for 25 people.”

Prior to our party at Clink, my husband and I were having dinner with my father at Scampo in the Liberty Hotel. My father was in town to also celebrate his 70th birthday, and my husband and I were paying for him to spend the night at Liberty so he could join in the festivities. At 7:50 my husband left Scampo to head to Clink to welcome our guests. At 7:55, he came back to inform me that Clink had us noted as a 5:30 arrival and as such has given away our event space and proceeded to try to charge my credit card on file for a No Call No Show cancellation. When I checked my phone I had not received a call, text, email ANYTHING from ANYONE at Clink in the 5:30 timeframe asking if we were going to be coming. They were simply operating under the assumption that we were pulling a No Call No Show.

At this point I left dinner to speak with the staff at Clink directly. There was a manager named Jonah who told me he would look into the incident and find a way to clear space for our event.

At this point my guests were arriving and without a clear space or dedicated server they started to open up their own bar tabs. We were not able to actually get to our space until 8:30. The reason why this is so upsetting to me is I had pre committed and agreed to a minimum spend at Clink on my credit card and I did not want my guests footing their own bill.

So obviously annoying but we were just choosing to continue with our night and have fun. Towards the end of the evening, our server informed us that they wanted to make up for their snafu by taking care of the cost of a charcuterie board for us, while also asking for a credit card despite the fact that I had filled out their credit card authorization form for the event several weeks prior.

While the complimentary charcuterie board was appreciated, I frankly wanted to have a conversation with a manager or any person with authority to understand what our options were because I was pretty annoyed with the way the entire situation had been handled. Here is where the real craziness comes in: both staff at Clink and the Liberty Hotel told me that they do not have a manager or GM. THIS IS INSANE. There is absolutely NO WAY an entity with the prestige of The Liberty Hotel does not have a GM or overarching manager to help provide smooth guest operations. Both my husband and I have over a decades experience of careers in hospitality & sales in Boston and this is just NOT how things are done. On top of this, several of our guests were also hospitality professionals who knew through their own network that this was not true.

Really at this point all my guests chose to leave instead of continuing to enjoy the night at the Liberty. We were no longer comfortable giving them money or our business. All in between dinner at Scampo, my fathers room reservation, and my pre committed buy out at Clink I spent several thousand dollars the The Liberty Hotel and was made to feel lied to and like shit.

I’ve lived in Boston since 2013 and have always enjoyed bringing visiting friends and family to The Liberty.Hotel. I will never give any of their businesses...

My wife and I recently celebrated our 10-year anniversary by booking a three-day, two-night stay at the Liberty Hotel Boston, which is identified as a “luxury collection hotel” (trust me, they don’t let you forget this fact because the word “luxury” is seemingly EVERYWHERE in the hotel, including the bathrobes).

The hotel’s main attraction is that it used to be the notorious Charles Street Jail. So, the hotel leans heavily on this fact, and it IS an interesting place to explore and stay.

The hotel is beautiful; the staff is professional, attentive, and very helpful; and the food is fantastic. However, specific aspects of the hotel diminish its identity as a “luxury collection hotel”.

We were booked into a room on the top (16th) floor (#1622), where we anticipated a great view of the city, especially after seeing the photos of such views on the hotel website. Despite those photos, our view was of the Mass Eye and Ear building, which is part of the Massachusetts General Hospital campus that directly abuts the hotel and is taller than the hotel.

Disappointing but who really stays too long in their room anyway, right?

Now, I’m the type of person who lives in the deep end of minutiae of anything; I can’t help it, I just see things most people don’t. As I explored the room, I started to notice a few things: some of the pictures in a collection on the wall were obviously askew and because they are mounted and not hung, they are permanently off-kilter; some of the wallpaper in the bathroom was peeling; a section of the slate or tile baseboard near the shower stall was crumbling; and a section of the wallpaper in the bathroom featured stains (one of which looked like it was blood).

Overall, the room was fine, but nothing I’d consider “luxurious”.

I also experienced something I’ve never encountered before in a hotel: despite being comfortable to sit on, I woke up both mornings with lower back pain from the king-sized bed. That was just very odd for me.

And then there’s the display near the lobby in which the history of the jail is recounted. As I was reading the display (which is printed on a large pane of glass suspended on the wall), I noticed that parts of some of the letters were scraped off as though they had been vandalized (by a child perhaps?). It was clear that this damage was not done to enhance the display because the outlines of the missing parts of the letters were clearly visible.

Frankly, it is this lack of attention to detail that makes me question the hotel’s designation as a “luxury collection hotel”.

And, parenthetically, although it probably is to be expected in a major destination city, the drinks at the bar were very weak pours (my wife and I ordered gin and tonics and it’s not hyperbolic to say that we couldn’t taste the gin at all).

Overall, I’d give the hotel 3 out of 5 stars. My wife and I felt that the hotel relies too heavily on the fact that it used to be jail and not enough on being a “luxury collection hotel”. They need to do better and pay closer attention to little details that, in my opinion,...