We recently stayed at the Royal Sonesta with our 2 and 4 year old children. The hotel is conveniently located across from the Galleria mall and around the corner from the Boston Museum of Science. River views were great from our room and the hotel. The hotel staff were particularly friendly and helpful. The room was quiet and clean. The only small issue we encountered was difficutly connecting to the complimentary WiFi the first night but were able to resolve this the next morning. We highly recommend this hotel.

Just refurbished rooms overlooking the Charles River and Boston. Big Pool with sliding glass roof .

Stayed here recently for a business conference. Nice location in Cambridge and very handy for the mall. Room was a spacious corner room with a very confortable bed, separate work area and large bathroom. Everything was OK but a little tired and scruffy.

All the staff were very friendly and helpful. Also, unusually for a conference, the food at breakfast and lunch was excellent. The facilities for our meeting were also very good.

Overall a very good hotel for a business conference.

I stayed at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Boston with my partner for a week in September 2011.

We arrived at the hotel quite late in the evening and were promptly shown to the reception and checked in. The staff were very helpful and attentive during check in and assisting with bags etc. There had been issues with our booking prior to arrival; my partner was working in the states and we subsequently agreed, after the initial booking, that I would visit him for a short time during his stay. The original booking had been therefore been for a single business room which we needed to upgrade. There was some difficulty with this initially until we were told to just turn up and they would see if they could upgrade us on check in. It was a concern prior to our arrival that we might have been stuck in a single business traveller room but at check in we were accommodated and given the keys for room 916 which was a disabled access room in the original hotel building (there is also a newer annexe on the other side of the hotel). The hotel was foyer was modern, bright and airy.

The room was extremely spacious given that it was disabled access and we also had the benefit of a massive bathroom and a view overlooking the Charles River and the Charles Hayden Planetarium.

The bed was very comfortable and huge! The room was cleaned on a daily basis and to a very high standard, the bathroom included a shower over the bath although the pressure was not very high.

There was a restaurant at the hotel but we did not eat there during our stay although we did have a few cocktails in the bar which, as expected, were reasonably costly compared to establishments outside the hotel.

The hotel was a perfect base for exploring - a short walk across the bridge to Boston, close to MIT and a short subway ride to Harvard. There is a subway stop which is located close to the hotel; Lechmere, although this was closed during our visit.

The hotel is very close to the Cambridgeside Galleria which is a small mall with a selection of shops and restaurants which are great - especially the Cheesecake Factory!

We also tried a brilliant Afghan Restaurant which is just slightly further than the Cambridgeside Galleria which I came across in a random search of restaurants in the area to go to. We hadn’t booked and it was very busy when we arrived but they managed to find us a table and the food was amazing!!

I understand that there were leisure facilities at the hotel including a pool and sauna but I didn’t make use of those facilities during our stay so cannot comment on them.

I know that the hotel was booked by my partner and his colleagues for work on the basis that it was one of the better rated hotels in Boston and was very good value. The hotel booking was room only so we did not eat breakfast at the hotel but there are plenty of little places nearby especially if you walk down Charles Street to Boston. Which was also where we found a number of dry cleaners who cleaned all of my partners clothes for him for $22 rather than paying $9 per shirt at the hotel!

I was leaving the hotel a week before my partner and I had thought this might make checkout complicated but in fact the staff dealt with check out swiftly and arranged for a taxi.