With the fall semester underway, college students weigh the pros and cons of living in a hotel instead of a traditional dormitory infused in campus life.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges nationwide utilized hotels to house students and maintain capacity while also practicing social distancing.
After the pandemic, Northeastern continued to buy and rent hotels to manage a shortage of housing in Boston, according to Boston.com.
Suffolk University also rented out multiple hotels during the pandemic and converted them into student housing. However, before the pandemic, the University bought a historic hotel in Boston, the Ames Building, in 2019, which was converted into a permanent residence hall in the fall of 2020.
Omari Pabaiue, a freshman at Suffolk University, said his dorming experience at the University has been “seamless,” because he completed his housing applications “a week before school started,” but was quickly given an assignment before moving in.
Isabella Fournier, a freshman at Northeastern, moved into the Midtown Hotel, which is strictly occupied by Northeastern students, at the start of the fall semester.
“This is just what we got,” Fournier said.
Fournier said she likes having a full size bed and her own bathroom, but dislikes being off campus. She also said that a downside of Midtown is that it does not have any common spaces for students to convene.
Regardless, the commute is reasonable compared to more expansive college campuses, she said.
Northeastern sophomore Amber Ramirez wasn’t notified until the end of July that she would be moving into the Sheraton on Belvedere Street in the fall after living in a residence hall during her freshman year.
“The difference here is that since the rooms are a little bigger, it doesn’t feel as tight or as uncomfortable,” Ramirez said.
She said comfortability in a living space plays an important part in “how well people perform academically.”
Anvi Fenn, a sophomore at Northeastern, lived in the Sheraton this past spring semester after her semester abroad in Greece.
Fenn said if a student stays in the Sheraton, they have to be on a university meal plan, which can be inconvenient, given most dining halls are a significant distance away.
“A lot of sophomores were put back into the Sheraton,” she said. “That’s what they had to resort to because there was nothing else left.”
Boston University has also developed a history when it comes to substituting dormitory living with hotel living due to a lack of space.
During the spring semester of 2024, some transfer students resided in the Hotel Commonwealth, and many transfer students during the fall semester moved into the Hyatt Regency across the Charles River in Cambridge.
BU spokesperson Colin Riley wrote in an email to The Daily Free Press that 89 transfer students, combined with some students from the Center for English Language and Orientation Programs and the Metropolitan College, are housed in hotels this fall.
Unlike Suffolk and Northeastern, BU is “not converting hotels into dorms,” Riley wrote.
Steven Ng, a front desk agent at the Hyatt Regency, said BU students appear to be “really satisfied” with their time spent staying at the hotel so far.
The students have access to an office space, cleaning services, a restaurant and a coffee shop within the hotel, he said.
Ng said besides occasional noise complaints regarding students in groups getting too loud, there is a mutually beneficial relationship between the hotel and BU.
“It’s really good for both of us, as a hotel and also for BU students,” Ng said.
