The Hartness House

The Hartness House is a charming and quaint property taking you back in time with all of the modern amenities to make you comfortable. The staff went above and beyond to make our stay wonderful. A sincere thank you to Nina who helped with surprise birthday decorations and a few extra accommodations to make a happy birthday even more special. We enjoyed our short stay and would love to visit again!

The main house is the former Governor Hartness’ home and has been completely renovated post-COVID. It is wonderful. The new addition of hotel rooms behind are very nice, spacious and comfortable. The Continental breakfast is nice, the bar service awesome (with a local historian serving) and even secret tunnel tours!

Hartness House is a beautiful 100-yr.-old home converted to an inn. An institutional compound has been built behind it where most of the rooms are located. My room was clean and quiet. It looked out over a beautiful garden vista. I'll never stay there again because: 1) There are no humans present. This doesn't sound terrible but I learned that having competent, welcoming human beings are important to feeling comfortable in a hotel/inn. 2) The system they use for check-ins is something called Lynx, which at one point informed me that I did not have a reservation, though I had already paid hundreds of dollars for one. Lynx also apparently controls security at the compound. 3) After a long day of driving and business meetings, when I arrived back at my room at 10:30pm, Lynx would not unlock the door. Four tries later, it worked. But with the knowledge that there was no one at a front desk (there is no front desk), no baggage handlers or maintenance or concierge on the premises, this was actually a scary experience. 4) "Check-in/check-out" involves a screen that one doesn't even encounter if one doesn't happen to enter the house, which requires a password. 5) If you enter the house to access the human-less table of muffins and coffee in the morning, there are Louis Armstrong records playing on a device in the lobby - the records are great, but in a deserted house it's eerie, kind of like a horror film. Seems like whoever owns the house took care to restore it and thought they should make some money off it, which is fine. Too bad they don't know enough or care enough about their customers' experience to actually staff the place. But I guess they're "disrupting the hospitality industry". Sigh.

Excellent stay! The property is meticulously maintained. We loved the ease of check in and check out. The mansion is beautiful. We stayed in the adjoining hotel and loved that we could walk through and explore and sit in the mansion. There were snacks and waters thoughtfully left for guests. The instructions for check in and check out were not only provided multiple times prior to stay via email, but also left for us upon arrival to ensure ease of check in. We LOVED this gem and would definitely stay here again!

We stayed at the property as part of an onsite family celebration. This is definitely a destination hotel, and it is soaked with history and charm. We stayed in one of the modern rooms at the back of the hotel (versus staying in one of the suites in the main mansion). Clean, efficient, great mattress, excellent a/c, etc. Without a doubt, the absolute high point of our stay was being taken on a free guided tour of the hidden tunnels built under the mansion and visiting the telescope museum. The hotel manager, Nina, was a delight and did everything she could to make us welcome and comfortable. Overall, it was a nice stay but we wish the hotel had an onsite restaurant as it would have made enjoying the grandeur of the property even more special.

We were very disappointed with this hotel. First we were made to believe, from the online listing, that we were staying in a beautiful home advertised as a mansion yet when we arrived, there we no personal touches. No one was there to greet us (this is the first time this has ever happened to us). From the online listing we thought we were staying in a mansion. Far from it! Our room was down a long hallway where it resembled any other hotel and hotel room. Very basic! We had a porch off the sliding door but no chairs to sit in and relax. The door with a combination lock that was closest to our room was “out of order” so we had to park in the back and walk back up to the front (not a well lit driveway) of the hotel only to have to walk all the way back down a long hallway to get to our room. There was no hair conditioner in the bathroom. Only shampoo. We could have stayed at the Best Western nearby and paid much less for the exact same set up. This is not a true, quaint Bed and Breakfast. If that is what you are looking for, this is not the place for you

The main house is nice. Lots of history here. A short drive from Okemo where we were going to ski. However, the carriage house is not as nice as the main house. And we were really looking forward to getting rest before an early departure but the walls were paper thin. There was a family next door with a sick child that coughed all night. It was as if the child was in the room with us. We could hear everything they did next door and we ended up being wide awake at 3am. I don’t think I would stay here again for this reason.

Here’s the thing. Hartness House is the nicest place to stay around Springfield MA. However, at around $400 per night, that’s crazy. I had ladybugs crawling around the room and the hot/cold water in the shower needed a physicist to figure out how to work the proper way to work it. It’s fine for an overnight, but I can’t recommend it for more than that