The 101-year-old dowager countess of Boston hotels, the 383-room Fairmont Copley is enviable for its higher-end aura: the entryway has been known as Peacock Alley (as in strutting) since the Jazz Age and John Kennedy’s grandfather, then the mayor of Boston, threw a party for 1,000 when the hotel opened. Room rates start above $300 and run to over $600. A 3,000-square-foot rooftop fitness club was added in 2012.

A hipper member of Boston’s higher-end, the W’s 235 rooms can actually start in the relatively affordable $200s, so long as you book at least a few days in advance. The hotel portion—floors 3 through 13—only opened in 2009, after funding troubles spawned by the Great Recession got in the way. The rest of the tower is luxury condos.

Opened in 1999, the 63-room XV Beacon was a game-changer: one of the first boutique hotels in New England. Its boutique-like feel remains undiminished—this is the hotel for business travelers too young to remember a world without high-speed Internet. Its sleek, black-and-white interior (and its steakhouse Mooo) was carved out of a 1903 Beaux-Arts building.

A rival to the Fairmount Copley in terms of old-school grandeur, the 551-room hotel went up in the late 1920s on the site of the old Parker House, which dated from just before the Civil War. (Also: JFK held his bachelor party there.) But! The Omni Parker is more affordable than the Fairmount: Rooms start in the $200s and rarely go higher. Make of the cheaper accommodations what you will.

The 273-room inn is one of Boston’s most recognizable branded hotels. As such, it does the hip-luxury thing pretty well, blending modern with traditional, business travelers just passing through with vacationers reveling in it all. The five-star hotel isn’t cheap, as you can imagine: Rooms start above $500 and some suites don’t even have listed prices—you have to just call.

One of Boston’s best-known branded hotels, the posh Mandarin Oriental has also been home to some of the city’s biggest condo sales ever (in fact, the biggest: $13,200,000 for a penthouse in 2011). The five-star, 148-room hotel is adjacent to the Prudential shops, making it the higher-end Boston hotel you don’t really leave—if you can afford to stay there: Rates start above $400 and quickly scale up to more than $1,000.

The boutique just spend $2.3 million redoing its lobby, bar and lounge; and guest rooms are being remade as you read (completion date: 2014). Rates usually range in the $200s, and there are special year-end deals going on right now.

The Charles is usually the most expensive hotel in Cambridge, depending on when you book. Since its opening in 1984 (it replaced an empty lot), the 294-room inn has been a rite of passage for M.I.T. and Harvard parents—and proof you can charge $350-plus a night outside of downtown Boston.

The old Ritz-Carlton is for the business traveler with a formidable expense account or the tourist going all out. Rates start at more than $200 and amp up quickly, with the Taj often sold out.

Opened in 1998 and seriously redone in 2009, this 428-room hotel is a ground-breaker in green. It was, in fact, named one of America’s greenest hotels by Forbes Traveler in 2008, and has picked up several other awards to that effect. Big with business travelers as it’s near the World Trade Center and the Innovation District, room rates run from the $300s to just over $500.

This boutique on Back Bay’s western borderlands always garners props for its quiet elegance (Time magazine, in fact, called it “small and traditional without being stuffy”). The 95-room inn is more than a half-century old, and, speaking of props, Travel + Leisure in 2012 named it the No. 1 hotel in Massachusetts. Suites can run over $500, but regular rooms start at under $300, meaning this might be the best boutique on a budget in Boston.

When this 114-room inn opened at the tail end of last decade just north of the Financial District, it was noted for being a hip redo of an 1889 building—a trendy envelope-pusher, if you will, about what Boston boutiques can be. It’s not pushing any envelopes price-wise: The Ames, with rooms starting just south of $300, is competitive with other city boutiques.

The Custom House has bones going back to the mid-19th century, though the tower wasn't plunked there until the 20th. Today, the spire functions as an extended-stay Marriott, the sort perfect for business travelers in town for a while or those relocating to the region. Rates start in the upper $200s.

Just north of the Longfellow Bridge, the Liberty is kind of out of the way for Boston (as you can see). So it’s definitely more for tourists than for business travelers, a solid historical choice (it’s housed in the old Charles Street Jail, for one thing). The Liberty’s 300 rooms start as low as the low $200s—a real bargain on this map!