If you can afford up to $1000 per night to stay in one of the ocean view cottages, then this is the place for you. My family and I stayed in the main building for two nights in a "property view" room at $425 per night including taxes and daily resort fees. What we got for our money was a second floor view of the roof and the kitchen ventilation ducts. The room was small, the beds were uncomfortable and the air conditioning unit performed poorly. We could not open the window at night because of the smell of cooking oil pouring out of the kitchen ventilation ducts directly in front of our window. Since the Inn was completely booked, we had to stay put.

The Inn's location and water shuttle to North Beach are the best features of the Inn. We walked over the sand dunes to the far side of North beach and it was spectacular. There were only three other people on the beach and harbor seals were swimming offshore. Such a pristine and tranquil place partly made up for our overpriced and substandard accommodations.

The food at the Tavern was excellent, but the dinner portions were small. Save your money, take the shuttle downtown and go to the Squire restaurant. You won't be disappointed.

If you have children, they will enjoy watching the fishing boats unload their catch of the day at the pier just up the road from the Inn. The harbor seals show up to receive fish scraps and are fun to watch.

Next time we will stay at the Bradford Inn.

We enjoyed using the Chatham Bars Inn . The rooms are charming and well appointed (although toiletries were not replaced after they were used and empty: a minor inconvenience). The service is otherwise superb. You can't beat the beauty of the location.

My wife and I stayed here on April 27th and 28th. The place is beautiful to look at. The cottage arrangement is interesting to deal with, but by spreading out the rooms the plan succeeds and works well. This is New England and Cape Cod as one reads about in magazines and books.

Now the bad:
1) The hotel tries too hard and does not succeed. This should NOT be a Leading Hotels of the World hotel.
2) Upon arrival, there was huge confusion as to where to park in order to check in. After driving for 5 hours, the last thing I wanted was to struggle to find parking. The attendant asked me to park in an area that I bloked the driveway for one of the cottages.
3) Our cottage did not have adequate parking. There seems to be more rooms than a corresponding number of parking spots (either that or the Bostonians brought two cars each).
3) The restaurant has mediocre food and so is the breakfast buffet. Do not waste your time. On the plus side, the portions are large.
4) The housekeeping staff are dumb. On Saturday morning they rang the door. When I opened the door and asked them to come back later, they would not leave. On Sunday, they came by at 9:00, even though check out time is 11:00.
5) Check out time is 11:00, checkin time is 3:00. This is a really pathetic schedule. This is the only hotel I have ever stayed that has such a retarded and inconvenient schedule.
6) The house cleaning staff somehow managed to get our toilet clogged. On Saturday morning the toilet worked, when we went for breakfast and returned to the room to get our things, the toilet did not work. The house cleaning staff had cleaned our room. I complained and the issue was taken care off plau $100 were deducted from our bill. That clearly tells me that management knew of the issue but waited for us to call in.

Overall, it was a nice place to look at, despite the construction that is going on, but the service experience was truly a mixed bag. I would stay again at the rate wwe paid, about $240/night, but not at their peak rate. If they could not manage the service now that it is relatively off season, I can only imagine how confusing things are going to be at peak season.

Actually, there appear to be other nice places near by and in the town of Chatham.

Regards,
Dimitri

Overall our stay was pleasant, but I guess I expected a bit more from what was slated to be a very nice hotel. We tried to get a really nice room in a really nice place, but it was just okay. Can't say that I'd recommend it for the price. And with marginal food it would have been better to be close to other food choices. Some details...

The food in the Tavern was good, not great. Certainly making it overpriced. The onion soup in the Tavern was actually terrible. There is some flavor in it that was unusual and made it not tasty. First time ever that we couldn't eat onion soup. We had a meal at a fraction of the price in Chatham that was far better.

I should have paid closer attention during reservation, but we were not offered anything above the Ocean View suite and my guess is that there were rooms that were nicer than that. It was okay, but not a great room. I expressed a bit of dissatisfaction with the room on check-in and nothing was done which is a bit unusual in my experience. They should definitely let people know during reservation process what all the rooms are, availability of nicer rooms, etc.

These are a bit beyond the hotels' control, but our neighbor was nice enough to turn the TV on really loud right next to our wall at 5:45AM (which is early west coast time). We tried to knock on their door. The front desk was not able to reach via phone. Finally after sending security to literally bang on their door for several minutes they turned the TV down. The placement of that TV is horrible. I was a bit surprised that we weren't contacted again by staff or a manager on this.

Oh and the fireplace smells of gas.

Maybe I shouldn't have given this even a 4, but it's more that if you are looking for a 4-star stay, this hotel is close but misses on a lot of little items that makes it something below where the guide books put it.