HotelChatter

The Inside Story

Much has been made about the outside of Hotel Commonwealth, and much of the façade criticism deserved, but once you get inside the hotel it is a whole different story.  The hotel is set up with guest rooms overlooking either the hustle bustle of Commonwealth Ave, or the sanctuary that is Fenway Park.  The rooms themselves are swank.  Complete with big puffy beds, a curtain separating the living room/sitting area from the bed, and a laundry list of impressive technology features.  Every room comes equipped with a DVD player attached to the 27" TV.  (The presidential suite has a 52-inch Panasonic plasma TV, but who can afford that room!)  The DVD player means no more paying $8 bucks a movie for "in room entertainment".  As a guest looking for movies, you can either

• Get DVD's from the hotels selection
• Have DVD's delivered to your room
• Bring your own from Netflix and avoid any sort of fees for movies

The hotel is also fully equipped with complementary WiFi and T3 connections in every room (yup, they tap into BU for the T3 pipe).  Finally, every room is equipped with portable SIP phones by Alcatel.  SIP appears to be an experimental hotel marketing tool, which may provide some interesting guest services.  However, after living through the Pointcast hype, any time I hear about marketers "pushing" messages I automatically think "push = bad news", but maybe there are customer uses for this service.  For instance, having a message on my hotel phone indicating that my flight is on time, cancelled or delayed could be extremely helpful.  Can anyone think of other useful SIP tasks in a hotel environment?  If you have other SIP hotel ideas share them in the comments section.

The Dreaded Facade

Here is my take on the façade issue: The current façade doesn't work, and everyone agrees.  Neighbors aren't happy with the design, the press expressed their feelings earlier this year, and the hotel operators and developers themselves ate crow on the design, admitting that a mistake was made somewhere along the line.  The good news is the developers intend to take a shot at fixing the dreaded façade issue.  The developers are spending over two million dollars to recreate the appearance of the property.  Fixing this property is not going to be easy.  Major changes will be needed, and even then there is no guarantee the morphed building will ever look like it belongs in historic Kenmore Square.  What I can say is after talking with Tim, and getting a look at the sketches and development plans for the façade, is that I am anxious to see the newly refurbished property next spring.  From the looks of the sketches, the property is trying to conform to the architecture of the current structures in Kenmore Square.  First, they are getting rid of the fiberglass (the yellowish element Tim refers to here).  Next, the developers are scrapping the dome atop the lobby entrance.  Finally, they are ridding the building of its spires and its wrought iron balconies, the latter in favor of traditional stone balconies like the ones pictured on the right hand side of this story.  

The BU angle

Maybe using the second floor as a BU freshman dorm wasn't such a good idea. On the other hand, maybe having BU kids shacking up at Hotel Commonwealth for a semester went without a hitch. But the bottom line seems to be the BU experiment is over.  BU's tenure on the second floor is coming to an end in December, thus the BU dorm story ends in a couple weeks.  Why did Hotel Commonwealth allow BU kids to drift into their pristine new hotel?  First and foremost BU led the financing for this hotel, and whoever holds the lien usually wields a mighty sword.  Secondly, there was precedent for using a hotel as a BU dorm.  Both the Holiday Inn in Brookline, and the Hyatt Regency Cambridge were dorm sites at one time, and both hotels are still standing.  

Bottom Line

If you are coming to Boston for Kenmore Square business, or a Red Sox game (Hotel Commonwealth has packages complete with tickets), and you want a swank hotel with the latest in digital creature comforts, you definitely want to check this place out. After all, the Sox don't play again at the Fens until Monday April 9th, and maybe by that time Hotel Commonwealth will have its new look.  Fixing the outside of this property is going to be a major challenge, and we will all watch with eager anticipation to see if the developers and Hotel Commonwealth can pull it off.