The 102-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.

The 256-room, five-star hotel helped change the whole area, though it still has the feel of being out there on the water’s edge in the best and worst senses (i.e. fabulous views, but isolated). Room rates average as low as the high $300s to just under $1,000. You’ll find more vacationers than business travelers at the Boston Harbor.

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.

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.

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.

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!

The Charles-side complex has 470 rooms, including 11 suites, and offers plenty of meeting space as well as a 24-hour fitness center. Mostly, though, it's that straddling-Cambridge-Boston-border location that puts in on the Hotels 18. All rooms generally fall within the $200 to $300 range.

This 190-room Kimpton boutique opened in 2002, smack-dab in the middle of downtown Boston. It combines luxury amenities, like personal shoppers by request, with a sort of buzzy contemporariness that the city needs more of if it’s to retain its young (read: trendy, but not just for the sake of being trendy; it's functional). Best part for those young folk: Rooms can be had for under $300.

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.

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 boutique in 2013 spent $2.3 million redoing its lobby, bar and lounge; and the Onyx is finishing up a renovation of its guest rooms. Rates usually range in the $200s.

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 Colonnade has one of the best rooftop pools in all of Greater Boston (not a feature, by the way, of every hotel on our map). A $25 million redo—and the rooftop pool—turned the 285-room hotel into one of the region’s top boutiques (e.g., not for the business traveler). Rates hover in the $300s and $400s.