Life House, Nantucket

Before I begin to talk about this particular "hotel", I must explain that we were originally booked at the sister property, Faraway, the same weekend last year but had to cancel because of a hurricane that was heading toward the island. Fast forward 8 months and I attempted to reach Faraway to rebook using our voucher (because they don't give refunds), and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get through to a human being (because online booking doesn't work when using a voucher). By the time I reached an actual person, Faraway was fully booked. Our original reservation was for a suite at Faraway and the best that they could offer (for more money!!!) at Life House was a Deluxe King, which is such a misnomer! Here we go: A Deluxe King is right inside the front door of a very old (not quaint or charming as you are led to believe on their website) center entrance colonial. The room is barely big enough for a king bed (my husband and I had to smoosh past each other when we were both moving around the room), there is an armoire (no closet), a mattress which could possibly be original to the house, 2 scrawny, itchy bath towels, and the noise of every person passing by our room in the hallway, upstairs over our heads, and outside on the sidewalk! We anticipated a nice, quiet getaway and, instead, were awoken by every single wedding guest who returned home late both nights that we were there. If you're going to spend that kind of money, just stay at one of the White Elephant properties. You'll sleep, you'll be pampered, and you won't feel like you've been completely ripped off. The only positive review that I can give of anything during our stay was that the staff were all lovely and welcoming! It's certainly not their fault that they work for such a horrible company... BTW I never review hotels but I couldn't let this one go. It was that bad.

DO NOT STAY HERE - Please Read Before Booking ——————————————————————————————- I normally do not write reviews, but after my experience at Life House in Nantucket, I feel compelled to share my dissatisfaction and STRONGLY URGE everyone to avoid staying here when in Nantucket. First, I was promised a 15% discount when I booked over the phone, but it was never applied to my final bill. When I called to resolve this, the manager was hostile, raised prices within a minute of the booking, and then claimed the discount was included. Nice customer service, right? To make matters worse, I was DOUBLE CHARGED out of nowhere, two months in advance of our stay. It took multiple calls to get the issue resolved. Why did I get double charged in the first place? If I hadn’t caught it, I would have paid an additional $3,700. Upon arrival, it quickly became clear that this was far from a luxury experience. The hostess greeted us with surprise, almost as if she wasn’t expecting us. When I inquired about our room, she reluctantly informed us that it wasn’t the best. We walked three flights up to find that we had been assigned the wrong room. I had booked a Deluxe Queen room but was given a Standard Queen instead. The room was tiny—200 square feet at most—with barely enough space for our luggage. The room itself had several issues. There was no iron or lockbox, amenities I expected at a luxury B&B. Worse, the SHEETS WERE DIRTY upon our arrival and were NEVER CHANGED during our entire 3-night stay. The Apple TV in the room was unusable due to preset configurations, so we couldn’t even watch a movie at night. To top it off, the Apple TV remote was filthy. 5-Bullet Review: • Extremely high prices for a cheap experience; I was double charged as well. • Unclean room and products. • Wrong room assigned, much smaller than what was booked. • Missing amenities: no iron, no lockbox, no welcome note, nothing complementary except one bottle of wine for the entire building, non-complementary bike service. • Poor customer service and unresolved issues with management. Given the reputation and price of this hotel, I expected much better service and attention to detail. I strongly advise potential guests to reconsider and avoid giving any of their money to this corporation, especially since I’ve heard there’s been a recent change of ownership. Thank you

This establishment is a quaint home that was converted into a very simple bed-and-breakfast. That is pretty much what you get, a very simple room and a very simple breakfast. On a one to 10 scale of places we have stayed this would score about a four. It has the virtue of being quite clean, and that is where three of the four points come from. The room we stayed in which was called deluxe was anything but that. The bed was actually fine, getting the fourth point, but I have never stayed in a hotel room where there was literally no place to put anything. There are no shelves, there are no closets of any scale, there are no dressers or drawers in which to store clothing, it is a bare bones room in part due to space limitations, and the choice of how it was arranged. The kids who ran the place while we were there were both very pleasant and accommodating, so staff is no issue. As long as you know what you’re getting into, and you believe the high price you’re paying for it is OK, then this is an acceptable compromise on an island where apparently this is more the norm than not. This will be our first and last visit to Nantucket as we have stayed at gorgeous hotels and resorts nearby on Cape Cod in Chatham and other locations around Cape Cod that put Nantucket to shame. The multi million dollar yachts in the harbor are entertaining to look at, and are the best accommodations on the island compared to any we saw on shore. Nantucket itself if one stayed in private accommodations located near a beach I am certain has more charm, but has little else to offer for the visitor compared to other alternatives that are easier to get to.

We had a great stay! Really great value for the location. The rooms and hotel were super clean and obviously newly renovated. Our room was ready on time and the staff held our bags and put in room for us while we popped downtown (we were early). The rooms are modern but have a ton of charm with unique finishes. The bedroom area is small, but perfectly fine for a couple. The nice thing is the bathroom and shower are very large comparably. This is not a “full service” hotel where you can order every little thing (some people complained about that in other reviews), but this did not bother us at all. They offer a lovely light breakfast included and coffee/tea, as well as flavored water everyday. The staff kindly left us a bottle of bubbly and some cookies for my birthday :-) We will be back! Only recommendation would be to include bikes for free instead of with a rental fee. Thanks for a great trip!

This was a strange place. Once we booked our single night stay, we had some questions about using their bikes and whether or not there was a shuttle from the ferry. We sent a couple emails and a text and called. No response. After much digging, my husband located a different number where he could send a text and received a response that there was no shuttle. No response about the bikes. The location is actually within easy walking distance from the ferry. That would have been nice to know as we paid for an Uber. From the outside it is very cute and fits in with all the architecture in the area. The inside is tight. Very tight. You enter through the door and walk into the “reception area” which is crammed with furniture. There was no one in sight so we popped our heads into the kitchen area and found someone to check us in. Fortunately our room was ready despite us arriving prior to the standard check-in time. This was appreciated. We were escorted up to the third floor. Note the stairs are very steep and cramped. We were glad we only had one travel sized piece of luggage. The room was cute but very small with a slanted ceiling on one side. The ceiling made it difficult to access one side of the bed. The air conditioner was very loud but did a good job of keeping the room cool. The bed was comfortable. The bathroom was also quite small but the shower was an ok size. For the price we paid I would have expected a much larger space. There was no ironing board or iron in the room and no phone in the room by which to request one. My husband went back downstairs to find someone to get such. At our request, when we left for dinner they did remove it from the room for us. We were told when we checked in that there was wine provided from 5 to 7 PM. We opted to take part in that and were offered a red or a white. We opted for a white that turned out to be quite warm and not to our liking. What was confounding was the resort fee. This is hardly a resort. Closer to a B&B without the actual food aspect. We were never quite sure what it covered other than “breakfast.” We went down to the kitchen to have breakfast and were given one croissant each and coffee. That doesn’t qualify as breakfast to me. We were able to leave our bag that morning while we spent some time in town and that was handy but overall we were not impressed with this location. I wouldn’t stay here again.

Life House is effectively a boarding house, without sufficient public space to even qualify as a B&B. There is clearly a range of room sizes, but caveat emptor given the risk of getting one of the teeny ones not even able to accommodate a desk. Finally, there is, IMHO, an egregious inclusion/exploitation of the “resort fee” concept. Hotel charges $30/day for that line, which would appear to provide access to…nothing? Let’s be clear…it has no onsite recreational amenities. It does have bicycles, though, for exclusive use of its guests! One problem…guests pay $35/bicycle per day for their use. It remains a complete head scratcher for me how it can justify that.

While this property was clean, and the area convenient, there were many downfalls. As it was originally a house, these rooms are quite small and there are accessibility issues. As well, it is quite noisy with some of the rooms having bathrooms outside their rooms and people going back and forth. Our air conditioning did not work properly the whole trip, and no one was successful at fixing it. The staff, while pleasant, must have been new, and knew relatively nothing about the area. If you are looking for more of a hotel experience, this is not your accommodation. I would not stay here again.

Overall decent stay at the Life House Nantucket. We were placed in a room on the main floor near the entrance which was especially noisy and were woken up every day by other guests (especially someone's screaming baby). The interior design was cool and the bed was comfy but the noise and lack of on-site complimentary bikes (they're $35/day each) means I will likely not be coming back.

We really enjoyed our stay at Life House! The room was clean and well decorated and the bed and pillows were so comfortable! The staff was always helpful and super friendly. Chris helped us with recommendations and checked in with us often to make sure we had what we needed. The breakfast is also delicious! A great place to stay in Nantucket!