YOTEL Boston

We booked 2 rooms in Yotel for us and our 16 and 18 year old daughters via BA on our recent family holiday to NY and Boston. Our reasoning was that it was one of the higher reviewed ( 4 Trip Adviser dots) mid range hotels on offer on The BA partner sight for our package deal, and we thought the modern quirkiness would appeal to our daughters. The location in Seaport is great, it’s a lovely neighbourhood, as well as being handy for the city centre, Freedom Trail and harbour. The hotel is very clean with comfortable beds and daily housekeeping if required. The tiny rooms are okay if you get organised but maybe a rethink in design might accommodation a fridge and tea/coffee maker. After all, it has been some years since the inception of Yotel and customer requirements and the provision from competitors, has moved on - lots of chains are more impressive with tech these days. While the girls love the mechanical bed and ambient lighting the overall impression was “ a bit hospital” . Hotel staff are generally friendly and helpful. Our main concern is about the general policies. We were given a room key which wasn’t working. I went down to reception to ask that it be reset. The staff would not do so without my photo ID - which I’d left in the room . Security escorted me back upstairs to check my ID but on getting back downstairs, I was informed the problem was linked to the recent CrowdStrike issue so the key could not be reset. This meant I had to be escorted back to my room again as my husband was out. All in view of everyone in the lobby - not great. I noted the man in the queue behind me had the same key problem but was escorted upstairs without need of ID? Also, the resort/destination fees are annoying, as we had already paid the room fees and taxes in advance. Overall, our NYC hotel earlier in the holiday, was still good value for a decent NY hotel, even with destination fees, because of amenities and vouchers but I am struggling to see what the benefits are here at Yotel. Additionally, given that destination/ resort fees are approx $ 25 a room per night, I have no idea why the hotel needed to take $100 per night per room as returnable security for the duration of our stay. On checking in, the card reader would not accept our card - maybe linked to CrowdStrike but at that point nobody said anything other than our card wasn’t working so we couldn’t check in, despite room fees and taxes having been already paid. The staff did manage to enable the transactions but we had about 24 hours on our credit card app. where $1600 ( 2 failed and 2 successful) transactions was “ maybe” going out as a returnable security on rooms which were already paid for. I don’t think we will use Yotel again. Read less