GUWonder

Was that property previously 30k or 35k per night?

When new, higher price categories are introduced by Choice for the Nordic Choice properties, it usually comes in for the newest additions to the Nordic Choice group while not impacting the award pricing at older properties as much (if at all). The history of the Quality View in Malmö coming available for US choice point bookings was the first big award price category hike in Scandinavia to give me a window into the awfully bad regional hotel value that can be had from points+cash bookings and even points-only bookings. And that was probably closer to 5-6 years ago.

I’ve almost always got the points within seconds to hours. Canceling the reservation while logged into the Choice site with your US Choice info, then logging out and logging back in seems to at times help me to make them available for rebooking faster.

By the way, I still seem to face issues getting emails for these award bookings. So it may make sense to screen capture your booking details so you have them in case the booking emails don’t show up in the email boxes.

synergistic

It's funny, tonight was the first night I noticed that I didn't get a confirmation email for an award booking. I'm sure it's happened before, if you've noticed it, I just never have. I'm almost always booking about half an hour before I arrive at a hotel, and they've always had me in the system, so somehow I never noticed.

GUWonder

It used to be the case for some of my same-day US Choice award bookings for these properties that if an email didn't come through within less than a few minutes of booking, then the chances of there being a booking or billing-related problem with the Scandinavian hotels on the relevant booked award nights rose from 0% to about 1-5%. Coincidence? As some of those had the confounding factor that could be identified if/when the points didn't seem pulled from the account at the time of the booking or within sub-3 minutes of the booking if logging out and back in after booking completion, it could be; but even when the points had been pulled and the booked stay and related point activity showed in the logged in Choice site/app, there were problems at times, more so when the emails didn't come. That said, most of those issues don't seem to happen like they used to happen; in part, I think that a big use of US Choice points across more and more Nordic Choice properties has helped; and another thing that has helped -- ironically -- is Nordic Choice's hotel loyalty program switching to a kind of policy that seemed like it was meant to exclude/discourage "third party bookings".

GUWonder

Seems like some Nordic Choice places that have senior staff around to deal with my checkouts and/or settlement for the US Choice award bookings are more likely to do things that disable earning of Nordic Choice credit for such stays booked using US Choice points than younger/newer staff.

NextWhiteDeath

I think that Villa Copenhagen is a new addition. At 40k points it is not good value most nights. Compared to SKT. PETRI for 20k of course that is if you can find availability.

GUWonder

The Villa Copenhagen was available for point bookings this past summer, and it came into the Nordic Choice fold before the recent end of the “outage” applicable to using US Choice points for Nordic Choice properties. I just don’t recall if the price was 40k points during July and August or if it was lower, but I know I found the point price value then to not be worth it.

I’ve had reasonable luck with finding Skt Petri award availability, but it and The Thief in Oslo are definitely two of the more difficult Nordic Choice properties for me to book using US Choice points. Yasuragi and Copperhill are the other two Nordic Choice properties where finding award availability have been a challenge for me in a way that doesn’t hit me with most other Nordic Choice properties of relevance to me.

NextWhiteDeath

Looks like the villa Copenhagen price is new.
I have had reasonable luck with getting The Thief on points. I also have had luck just price matching the US choice site for a free night.

GUWonder

I saw The Thief for tonight at 20k points. It was a first attempt to look for someone wanting to stay for a night there this weekend and it wasn't a problem. It's usually been easier for me to find availability at The Thief than with the Skt Petri in Copenhagen; but I tend to be looking more at the Skt Petri and doing so more last minute than when I am looking at The Thief.

Since a lot of Nordic Choice hotels seem to have been bringing back online their older staff and as the newer staff coming online are learning, I'm actually finding more and more of the hotels are actively looking for my Nordic Choice Club number and adding it in for my US Choice award bookings for Nordic Choice hotels. This is happening to me primarily at the hotels where the hotel staff knows my habit of giving them the Nordic Choice Club number for my convenience during the stay, but it seems to primarily be a day-of-check-in thing.

What I am also finding is that some of the newer Nordic Choice hotels are actually a lower point level using Nordic Choice Club points than US Choice points when looking at some of the smaller markets in the region. Of course earning rates are very different; but as my NCC points are often being racked up on award stays using US Choice points, I consider the NCC points to be sort of like free gravy.

NextWhiteDeath

The Thief usually has some availability open up when your looking last minute. I think they open up award availability if they haven't sold all the base rooms like a day before check in. It the same way I got a Thief booking in August.
Also it looks like all the new Nordic choice hotels aren't going up in price aka not seeing low redemption rates. I also notice that Svalbard now has a choice hotel. It is only 12k a night and availability is excellent. Temped to fly up there this winter for the northern lights or next summer.

Ijones027

the choice hotel funken in svalbard has availability on it's own website but not on choice website alot of days is that normal?

abcx

award or cash?

GUWonder

Both. But for what it's worth, it's also not available either way via Nordic Choice itself. Funkenlodge.com, however, has availability for NOK.

Ijones027

yeah why wouldn't it be available for nook on nordic what gives

GUWonder

Maybe something to do with the hotel ownership/management? Among Choice-affiliated hotels in the Nordics, it's the Ascend properties that tend to be the ones that have serious availability issues that come up a times as a result of a technical problem and/or some other issue/restriction. And even among the Ascend ones in the region, this Svalbard property has been the one that has been among the most common Nordic Ascend properties to be more often "offline" for some reason or another.

This Svalbard property opened right after WW2 and it was long owned by a Norwegian mining company; that mining company then sold it around 30 years ago to Hurtigruten Svalbard. For some reason it was renamed to its current name around 2018. I know that in the year following -- in 2019 -- that the Hurtigruten cruises had problems with getting Russian approval for trips and so there were some cancellations.

Ijones027

it seems like hurtigruten has a monopoly there