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We run Spare Keys Stay ourselves, here in Boston. Questions before you book? Daryl answers personally.
Call or text 617-799-4558 [email protected]Registered with the City of Boston · STR-629372
Room for everyone, for less
Hotels near Boston University and Northeastern run $509-$699 a night on graduation weekend. Whole apartments sleeping up to 10, free parking, no booking fees.
The college family weekends fill every hotel near the river. Harvard's Family Weekend runs Thursday Oct 22 to Sunday Oct 25, with MIT's Family Weekend (Oct 23-24), Northeastern's (Oct 23-25) and Emerson College's Alumni Weekend (Oct 22-25) on the same dates.
The hotel prices show it. On Google, for the nights of Oct 23 to 25, The Charles Hotel in Harvard Square was listed at $1,659 a night and the DoubleTree Suites in Cambridge at $784 - on an ordinary Monday the same DoubleTree was $288. Those were the nightly rates with fees showing on 27 September; expect them to climb, not fall.
A family weekend or a crew trip is not one hotel room. Ours are whole apartments with free parking: three bedrooms that sleep seven, a full kitchen, a washer and dryer, and one booking instead of three rooms. A crew of nine takes two apartments on the same street. From the Dorchester apartments it is about 35 minutes by train to Kendall/MIT and 40 to Harvard Square - the commuter rail from Talbot Avenue, a 4-minute walk, then the Red Line from South Station; BU and Northeastern are a short drive, and every apartment has free parking. Pick your nights in the calendar on any apartment below to see the live rate and book direct with no service fee.
| Weekend | 2026 dates |
|---|---|
| Harvard Family Weekend | Thu Oct 22 - Sun Oct 25 |
| MIT Family Weekend | Fri Oct 23 - Sat Oct 24 |
| Northeastern Family & Friends Weekend | Fri Oct 23 - Sun Oct 25 |
| Emerson College Alumni Weekend | Thu Oct 22 - Sun Oct 25 |
May is the most expensive week of the year to sleep in Boston. Recent commencement-weekend hotel pricing ran between $509 and $699 a night, with a number of properties simply showing sold out on the peak dates. Families are routinely advised to book three to six months ahead, and earlier still for the late-May week when Harvard and MIT overlap.
Now count the rooms. Two parents, a sibling or two, and a set of grandparents is not one hotel room - it is three. At those rates, three rooms for three nights is well past $4,000 before anyone has eaten or parked a car.
Our three-bedroom apartments sleep seven, and the four-bedroom sleeps ten - one whole apartment, one booking.
Boston and Cambridge hold something like thirty-five colleges between them, and their commencements are spread across May rather than falling on one weekend. That is why availability moves so strangely - a date that looks open in early May can be impossible two weeks later.
Confirmed dates for 2027 are below. If your school is not listed, check its registrar - and then check our calendar for those exact nights, because the apartments book on the same cycle the hotels do.
| School | 2027 commencement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Boston University | May 13-16 | Full commencement weekend; all-university ceremony Sun 16 |
| Boston College | May 24 | Monday ceremony |
| Harvard University | May 27 | 376th Commencement; overlaps peak demand |
Graduation is a group trip that behaves like a family holiday. People fly in from several states, everyone wants to be together, and there is usually a celebration meal involved.
A hotel splits that across floors and charges for each room. An apartment keeps everyone under one roof with separate bedrooms, so the grandparents get a proper bed in a room of their own. The full kitchen matters more than people expect - you can host the dinner yourselves rather than trying to book a table for eight in Boston on the busiest weekend of the year. Most have in-unit laundry, and there is free off-street parking for however many cars the family arrives in.
This is the one trip where waiting costs you real money. Graduation dates are announced a year ahead and families book against them immediately, which is why hotels are quoting $509 and up by the time most people start looking.
If you know the date, hold the apartment. Call or text and we will tell you straight away what is open for those nights - you are talking to the owner, not a call centre.
Daryl's place was spacious. We went to Boston for our daughter's graduation - six of us total. Very comfortable and clean. Kitchen was fully equipped. We really enjoyed our stay.— verified guest review
