Harvard Square Hotel

I’ve stayed here twice and already have plans to come back! The hotel is older, but the rooms have been updated very nicely — everything is clean, modern, and comfortable. The staff is attentive and welcoming, making each stay feel easy and relaxing. The rooms are a bit smaller and accommodations are more limited compared to larger hotels, but the combination of cleanliness, great service, and a fantastic location easily outweighs that. Highly recommend if you’re looking for a well-kept, friendly place to stay!

Harvard Square Hotel – Ivy League Views, Boutique Snooze If location is everything, this hotel has a PhD in being perfectly placed. Room 320 gave me a front-row seat to Harvard Square — snowfall, street sounds, and that unmistakable Cambridge charm. You can practically hear the dissertations being written. The rooms are on the small side — more “efficient” than “spacious” — and the shower takes that concept to the extreme. It’s so narrow that avoiding the first blast of cold water is impossible unless you have Matrix-level reflexes. I considered it my daily cold plunge and called it character-building. One less charming moment: the lobby is tiny, and while sipping my morning coffee, I overheard a pretty tense exchange between staff at the front desk. Not ideal when you’re trying to ease into your day. The staff was friendly otherwise, but in a space that small, drama travels. At $300+ a night, it’s not a steal — especially with no breakfast — but for the unbeatable access to Harvard’s campus and the energy of the square, it still lands as a solid choice for campus visitors and urban explorers alike.

This was the worst experience I’ve had. Think carefully before trading cleanliness, quiet, and your money just for the location—it’s not worth it. The soundproofing is terrible: you can hear people coughing, showering, and even their TV. The cleaning staff rudely knocked and urged me to leave nearly an hour before checkout. And yet, the place was far from clean—the toilet, bed, and floors were dirty. It’s pretty clear they don’t change the bedding. Guess what surprises you might find in your sheets. also the wifi slow as 2000s

Our stay at the Harvard Square Hotel was terrifying. We traveled as a group of 20 for a conference at Harvard, expecting a pleasant and professional experience, but instead, we were met with one of the most disturbing incidents I’ve ever encountered. One of our members went down to the front desk and asked to book an additional hotel room, and a hotel employee simply grabbed a key card and told her he would accompany her to her room. The employee tried to get close to her in the elevator and followed her into the vacant hotel room. Once inside, he attempted to touch her. Thankfully, she was able to escape before anything worse happened, but the emotional and psychological toll of this incident was immense. This is a gross violation of safety and trust. To make matters worse, the hotel staff’s response was inadequate. Instead of offering any meaningful support or addressing the seriousness of the situation, they only offered to refund our group for ONE night of our stay, which is a deeply offensive response to what occurred. We called the police, and they came to the hotel to investigate the situation, but this only added to the distress and trauma we experienced. This entire experience left our group feeling unsafe and traumatized. We came to Harvard Square expecting a professional, secure, and wholesome environment. I strongly advise anyone considering staying here to look elsewhere for their safety and well-being.

Some of the staff are well-trained, polite, and helpful, but some are not. I added two days to my stay, and on the original day of checkout, there was relentless pounding at the door. I did my best to explain that I wasn't checking out that day, but it took a lot of convincing. Then, fifteen minutes later, the pounding on the door resumed, and I had to explain again. This episode was repeated on my true checkout date, when I arranged to checkout at noon instead of 11 with the front desk. The front desk must have neglected to share this information with their staff. Not only was there prolonged pounding at the door, the employee was very rude. "Who said that?!" "Who did you talk to?!" "When was this?!" It was like a police interrogation in a 1950s movie. Early during my stay, two front desk staff members had extremely poor English pronunciation. Both my parents were immigrants, so I sympathize with the difficulty of learning English, but there are many jobs in the hotel. The front desk job should only be given with those who have at least an intermediate fluency in English. On the other hand, the vast majority of the employees spoke English at good proficiency or better. It should be noted that the rooms have no coffee/tea maker, but there is coffee and tea in the lobby. This includes sugar and artificial sweeteners, but no milk or cream. There's absolutely no food available, neither free nor for purchase. While there are trendy coffee shops nearby, those places are also crowded and therefore slowish. I found this arrangement inconvenient, but not insurmountable. There were other problems. When I first checked in, there was something wrong with the lock of my room, and I couldn't get inside. So they gave me a different room. Of the many surfaces in the room, one had not been cleaned. Also, there's only one elevator, and it's rather slow. The back door of the hotel was left unsecured after 11 pm, and I think that's unwise, because the Harvard Square neighborhood does have some homeless folks, or as we say in the Harvard community, persons who are temporarily unhoused.