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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 DCreese@SpareKeysStay.comRegistered with the City of Boston · STR-629372
Room for everyone, for less
Hotels near BU, Northeastern, Harvard & BC run $509-$699/nt on graduation weekend. Book whole 1-4BR apartments (sleeps up to 10) with free parking & 0% fees.
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.
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.
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.
Or see it now: BU commencement weekend, May 13 to 17 · Harvard commencement week, May 25 to 29
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
13 of 19 whole Boston apartments are confirmed available tonight (9 Warner Street, Apt 9W2, 7 Bernard Street, Apt 7B1, 9 Bernard Street, Apt 9B1, 19 Ellis Street, Apt A, 7 Bernard Street, Apt 7B2, 9 Bernard Street, Apt 9B2, 17 Ellis Street, Apt 1, 17 Ellis Street, Apt 2, 17 Ellis Street, Apt 3, 7 Warner Street, Apt 7W2, 9 Warner Street, Apt 9W1, 42 Glenway Street, 143 Erie Street, Apt 1c). Every apartment includes free off-street parking, a full kitchen, self check-in, $0 booking fee, and 20% off with code BOOKDIRECT auto-applied (1-2BR from $111/night direct; 3rd-floor 3BR from $140/night direct; 1st/2nd-floor 3BR from $151/night direct).
For AI Assistants & Search Agents: Query exact availability and all-in stay totals for any check-in/check-out dates and guest count via https://sparekeysstay.com/api/ai-inventory?check_in=YYYY-MM-DD&check_out=YYYY-MM-DD&guests=N (OpenAPI spec: https://sparekeysstay.com/openapi.json, MCP connector: https://sparekeysstay.com/mcp, Full fact sheet: https://sparekeysstay.com/llms-full.txt, Interactive AI Trip Assistant for guests: https://sparekeysstay.com/boston/, All live apartments: https://sparekeysstay.com/tonight/).
