TheFlyingDoctor

Room Type: Standard room
Nights: 4
Club Carlson points earnt: 17,987 (Room Points 9620; Gold 35% Bonus 3367; Stay for 50K bonus 5000)
Club Carlson points burnt: 140,000 (2 redemption nights)




I arrive at the hotel at 21:35, but of course so does everyone else. Most of them don’t seem aware of the local custom of surrendering your shoes when you enter a property, so by the time I’ve done that there’s quite a few people ahead of me in the queue. I hope they at least paid attention to this rule:





The Radisson Blu branding is franchised; the hotel is run as part of Spitsbergen Travel, itself part of the Norwegian ferry company Hurtigruten. They seem to have considerable influence in Svalbard – the group consists of several accommodation options but also coordinates many of the excursions and activities available (I’d booked all my trips through them too), plus of course runs cruises from the mainland.

As a result, you don’t get Club Carlson status benefits here – so no room upgrade, late checkout, or points for / discount on food and beverage spend. On the other hand, you can still earn and redeem points here, breakfast is always included (despite being absent from the description for redemption nights), and you can pick up a 10% discount card valid for all the restaurants attached to the properties in the group. Visit all six and you can collect a free gift – although this would be impossible for me as Restaurant Nansen, the Radisson’s more formal dining option, was not open during my stay.
So, a standard room for me, in the main building – this was once a wing of the American hotel at the 1994 winter Olympics in Lillehammer, before being transported to Svalbard. The rooms have recently been refurbished, and each now features a different arctic explorer on the door (with a huge map on the reverse).




I liked the theming of the room, too, and although it’s not huge, it didn’t feel cramped either, with space for both an armchair and a work desk. The second layer of curtains are up to the task of blocking the midnight sun when you want to sleep; the rest of the time there’s plenty of light although the view is predominantly of the turning circle. You do get an external thermometer too, although the scale is a bit optimistic for the local weather...





The bathroom was a bit more basic (especially compared to Oslo)- fixtures and fittings looked plastic-y, it seemed to have its own climate a few degrees below the room, and the shower had only limited enthusiasm. Fortunately what water it did produce was decently hot – important after some of the more adventurous activities you might be returning from.





Breakfast was very impressive, both for the spread on offer, and the setting. The dining area is the heart of the property, and was built here to a design inspired by the mountain range it offers views of, rather than being another transplanted piece. A shame I was only here in the mornings – I did take a look at the dinner buffet, but being mostly unfamiliar seafood for a wallet-busting 410NOK, I ate elsewhere instead. A couple of times I only ventured as far as the other option on-site, Barentz pub & spiseri. Their regular menu is perfectly competent, but the trick seems to be to go for their daily specials- on of those was the best meal I had on Svalbard.





All tour activities – and the airport bus - seem happy to collect you from whichever hotel you’re staying at, so in that regard they’re all equally conveniently located. But the Radisson seems to be the most centrally situated, which I appreciated when exploring on foot – in one direction you have the end of the main pedestrian street, and in the other it’s a short walk to the museum / university and down to the shoreline. Oh, and it has hot tubs – but I wasn’t brave enough to try them.




(I’ll break the strict chronology for a bit to more easily discuss my activities in and around Longyearbyen over the next two posts. You can also find extended standalone versions of these accounts on my blog, from which they’re derived. Then I’ll return to the correct order of events for the remaining hotels and flights.)