One of the city's top hotels with amazing service, a parkfront location, a great health club with a beautiful pool, and an iconic restaurant, the 273-room Four Seasons offers luxurious and spacious rooms with stunning granite bathrooms. But there's no full spa on-site.

With impeccable service, some of the biggest guest rooms in Boston, and a phenomenal gym, spa, and lap pool, the 230-room Boston Harbor Hotel is among the city's most luxurious hotels. The restaurant is celebrated for its extensive wine collection, and the harborside location means gorgeous water views from many of the rooms.

The Boston Ritz-Carlton is refreshingly intimate with spacious, luxurious standard rooms and access, for a fee, to one of the city's best gyms, with its own spa, salon, and pool. But it doesn't thrill stylewise, service is uneven, and the restaurant is unremarkable.

This high-design property from the hip Morgans Hotel Group exudes sophistication. Period details -- the building, Boston's first skyscraper, dates back to 1889 -- are juxtaposed against sleek David Rockwell design. Rooms are gorgeous, with a black and white motif, comfortable beds, and modern technology. Bathrooms are similarly stylish, with Malin + Goetz toiletries and rain showerheads. The fitness center is small, but well-equipped, and meeting spaces are pleasant. There aren't any other features, but the service is solid and the location near Faneuil Hall and Beacon Hill is great. It's a first-rate choice for business travelers, trendy singles, and couples.

A former Federal Reserve bank turned luxury hotel in the grey, sterile Financial District, the Langham boasts immaculate, distinctively Bostonian rooms (with flat-screen TVs and Wi-Fi), spot-on service, and a stellar spa, but significant street noise keeps it from attaining perfection.

Palatial, contemporary, and elegant, the InterContinental offers huge, immaculate rooms and an array of decadent amenities (massage, pool, sushi, cocktails) in a scenic harborside location, but the service doesn't quite compare to that at Boston's best luxury hotels.

The all-suite Marriott Custom House is like your mom's Toyota minivan -- stylish it ain't, but it's reliable, comfortable, and accommodates large groups. Service is minimal, but big rooms with kitchenettes, a pool table-outfitted game room, daily fresh-baked cookies, and proximity to attractions make it a good value, especially for families.

Steeped in history, stuffed with ghost lore, and teeming with old-world grandeur, the surprisingly affordable Omni Parker House is the place to stay for a taste of Boston's literary and political past. But manage your expectations when it comes to service and rooms.

The 498-room Hyatt Regency is in need of an overhaul -- it's outdated, disorganized, and not well maintained. While the location is good, on a quiet street in downtown with the Boston Common and the Financial District each just a block away and it has a big 24-hour fitness center, it's hard to recommend a stay here; just up the street the Omni Parker House does it better.

A sleek, 426-room affordable business-oriented hotel with a great gym, a no-tipping policy, impressive eco-initiatives, and a floor's worth of obsessively hypoallergenic "PURE" rooms, the Seaport offers something a bit different from its comparably priced neighbor the Renaissance and much lower rates than the nearby Westin Boston Waterfront.