Full disclosure-I am a marriott elite which typically means I'm used to excellent service, potentially freebies and sometimes an upgraded room when I stay at Marriott properties. I mostly stay at small non Marriott hotels when I travel to NYC but outside of that area prefer Marriotts when I have the choice.
I stayed over the weekend for one night at the Courtyard South Boston. I was underwhelmed by this hotel, it's average. The room had a decent view. The hotel only has 6 floors so ask for a room on a higher floor if you want a view. The check in clerk seemed busy at our 3'sh check in time but the room was ready.
The good:
-free parking and a very easy trip into Boston. We had no issues (once we figured out where the hotel was) with getting in/out of the city from this location.
-convenient to shopping (target, best buy, etc) if you forgot anything at home
-no bedbugs, at least in our room. I check every single time in every hotel I'm in.
-wasn't as noisy at night as staying in the city itself. I travel a lot for work so I'm used to it but when traveling with my kid for a random trip, I want him to sleep well.
The bad:
-my room was not 100% clean. There were hairs in the sink and on the bathroom floor. There were also a few on the blanket. There was an empty ice cream box on the floor with a wrapper/stick in it. We did not complain about this and just picked them up with a tissue. They seemed really busy and that's probably what they would have done anyway.
-our TV would not work right at first, the lady at the front desk was nice about it and they came up to fix it while we were at dinner. Minor annoyance, but still, I usually don't have problems like this. One of the marriotts I stayed in had a glass of wine waiting!
-the air conditioning was really loud in our room when it is gearing up to reach the temperature on the thermostat. We just wound up shutting it off in the middle of the night, it kept waking the kid/me. Could just be an older room, I'd test it during waking hours if you are staying there.
Not their fault but the people next door to us started smoking in their room in the morning. My kid has asthma so we had to check out early. They nicely offered to move us to a different room for the couple of hours but it just wasn't worth it. We just headed to our destination earlier. I really wish people would pay attention to the no smoking signs! The staff was very nice and looked like they were going to go up there and approach them (I hope so!).
Maybe I've just had great experiences elsewhere but I will be trying a different hotel when I go to Boston for business in a couple of weeks. I rarely travel for family travel, usually for business and was hoping this hotel would be a good choice for future family trips to Boston. I plan on staying in the city the next two times and see how painful that is before deciding if I will give this property another try.
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