Kimpton Marlowe Boston

As we know, I mostly just post about flights and credit cards. Every once in a while, I stay at an interesting hotel that I want to add to the blog. I’m not that adept yet at reviewing hotels, and I’m mostly into the rooms themselves. I’ve found that, in general, hotels have a lot of pictures available of what the hotel’s various rooms look like but not a lot of the rooms themselves.

On my trip to Boston, I was visiting with my friend Chris, and we needed a hotel for 2 nights. I had planned just to book a generic Marriott hotel, but they were all expensive. The Fairfield Inn (one of the Marriott’s cheaper brands) was $290/night (incl taxes and fees). Instead, I decided to check out Amex Travel’s options.

Booking

I booked this hotel through American Express’ “The Hotel Collection”. Since I booked this IHG property through Amex Travel, I was not eligible to receive any elite credits or earn IHG points. That’s fine because I don’t use IHG ever. However, booking through Amex Travel offers elite-like benefits despite not having status.

One of the perks of my Amex Platinum Card is that I get $200 off a hotel booked through Amex’s Hotel Collection or Fine Hotels & Resorts program once per year as long as it’s charged to my Platinum Card. In this case, the hotel was showing as $335/night. After the $200 credit, the hotel was only $235/night, which is $55/night less than the Fairfield Inn for a much better hotel. In addition, we were eligible for a suite upgrade, which did, in fact, clear. We also got a $100 credit at the hotel, which we used for dinner. So staying at the Kimpton was the clear winner and definitely the right decision.

The room

Since we were upgraded to a suite, the room consists of three separate rooms (with four areas). Upon entry, you were greeted by the foyer, which continued directly into the main room.

To the right was the bathroom, which had a toilet,

A shower,

a single sink,

and a jacuzzi bathtub.

The jacuzzi bathtub was definitely my favorite part of the hotel room!

Passing through the bathroom leads to the bedroom, which was a single king bed. It’s my understanding that the bed areas are largely the same in allyq the room types.

Amenities

The hotel offers the standard amenities: a restaurant, gym, and spa.  The $100 credit can be used at any of these locations as long as the bill is charged to the room.  We opted to use it at the restaurant for dinner. 

The other interesting amenity that the hotel offers is a wine happy hour.  At 5 pm, they bring out some wine in the lobby (one red, one white) that is free for guests of the hotel.  They didn’t actually check if we were staying at the hotel, which was interesting.  The stand is setup just inside the entrance, beside a nice lounge area. 

In summary, considering this was the cheapest full-service hotel that I could find for our trip, I was extremely pleased.  The hotel itself is great, and getting elite-like perks, including the suite upgrade made it even more amazing.  While, in theory, it would’ve been great to get elite credit for the stay, the better perks we got definitely made up for any lost points in my opinion.