Best Four Star Hotels in New Bedford

We had a very disappointing experience with the New Bedford Harbor Hotel. My wife and I stayed here for our wedding in the area, and a number of our wedding guests stayed there too. On the positive side, the hotel is in a great location in downtown New Bedford, near lots of good restaurants and historic sites. We also appreciated the hotel's dedicated parking lot. The bar seemed like it was going to be great for our guests to enjoy. Unfortunately, we had lots of issues. First of all, our room was not particularly clean. We found a Cheerio on the ground within the first few minutes of arrival, and there were lots of stains throughout the room. It wasn't awful, but not great. We then started to run into service issues. First, the hotel inexplicably cancelled a reservation that our family had for 3 rooms. We had called to change the reservation to the name of the people who would be staying, which the hotel said was fine. When the guests finally checked in, however, the hotel had released the rooms and there was no other availability. The hotel gave no warning and just cancelled the rooms, leaving our family members without a place to stay. We also planned to have an informal ”after party” at the hotel after our wedding. Our wedding planner had called the hotel, and they had ensured us that it would be no problem for us to show up at the hotel's bar with 50-70 guests. We asked them to reserve a space for us, but they said they had a few weddings staying in the hotel so could not reserve any space. When we showed up after the wedding, not only had the hotel booked the space for another group, but they refused to serve anyone from my wedding, even though there was plenty of space. There were probably 5-10 people beyond our group at the hotel's fairly large bar, but they still refused to serve us, for really no clear reason. The bar staff was also extremely rude to my wife and me (on our wedding night), even though we were just trying to understand why we couldn't be served. Luckily, there was a good bar in the area that welcomed us. My family is from the New Bedford area and I really wanted to like this hotel. I was really excited when it opened, with the hope that it might bring more visitors to see the area. Unfortunately, I would not recommend this hotel to anyone coming to visit. They really need to fix their operational issues and poor management.

This may be the nicest Fairfield Inn I have stayed in. I choose this hotel for it's close walk to the ferry. While I only have silver status with Marriott Bonvoy we were given a high room with bay view. Breakfast and coffee were good, especially the frittatas and appreciated the gluten free muffin/bagel options. We enjoyed the proximity to the Black Whale where we had a delicious dinner. We would definitely return, even though it is outside our primary loyalty program, but have a growing fondness for MB.