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 Langham's building started life in 1922 as a Federal Reserve building, and became the Langham as we know it in 2003. You'll note that the second-floor rooms all have soaring ceilings, a la the old bank milieu. You'll also note that the luxury hotel's rates are not so luxurious, if you act early enough: Some rooms go for just over $200 a night.

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.

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.

The hotel promises "simple, chic" rooms, and pretty much delivers that: a kind of budget luxury hotel, with rooms start at just under $200. Not to be confused with its newer "sister hotel," Chandler Studios.

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.

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 471-room hotel opened in early 2008 as Marriott’s attempt at a boutique-y inn in Boston. That largely still holds, though it’s unlikely the business travelers and conventioneers in the Renaissance Boston Waterfront really notice the boutique-y part. Rates hover in the $400s, some cheaper, some (rarely) more expensive.

The boutique recently 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.

The 214-room Lenox sits smackdab in the middle of choice Back Bay, with its shopping and tourist-y spots. Rates remain, however, affordable, starting (and often staying) in the $200s. Perfect for tourists as the summer approaches.