Greetings from the CPH Clarion itself.

New this year:

- Price is much lower than when it was the Hilton ($160 v easily $260 in the good old days)
- Breakfast is a definite downgrade but still solid. Notably there are no omelet or carving stations. Choice is a bit more limited but quality of food is OK. We had soft boiled and hard boiled eggs, crepes, smoked turkey, cheeses, fruits, cucumbers and peppers, croissants and breads with butter, and all of these were good.
- The former restaurant area is under construction, they are currently sanding the floors. The breakfast area at the moment is behind the elevators.
- The lobby has been (in my opinion) downgraded in terms of design, with weird lighting fixtures and too-low-for-the-space furniture. They have opened up the wall on which that giant painting used to hang. The children's room, which was behind that wall, no longer exists - it's part of an open lounge area now. My nearly 4-year old was not pleased but truthfully it's better use of the space.
- The bathroom amenities are nailed to the walls, the wear and tear in the bathroom is more noticeable, and housekeeping is not as attentive. Nothing atrocious, but we did have to call three times for the rollaway, no one cleaned our room after 12pm (we were jet lagged and had the DND sign on until noon) etc.
- The staff have all been wonderful.
- There is indeed a "budget" Nordic Choice property being built next door, as someone above pointed out. There is no building visible yet but it will allegedly open in 2019. The fences around the site advertise "605 low cost rooms" and "meeting space 3 minutes from the gate." The latter seems like quite the exaggeration but maybe they mean three minutes as the crow flies? Speaking of birds, we've seen a ton of magpies and crows in this trip. We also took a walk to the beginning of one of the runways (you can also take the car rental shuttle to the same area) and enjoyed some quality plane spotting.
- The wifi is free and fast, although they weirdly block or throttle some random sites (like a parenting forum i read).
- Overall, the lower cost is welcome and makes the changes tolerable, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they keep up with the maintenance.

There have also been some changes to the dining options in the terminals, notably the bakery Lagkagehuset is gone as is the (very good) coffee place that was near the elevators for the metro. In Terminal 2, the pub is also gone. There are a couple of new Pret-a-Mangers, a Wok (Thai) and another modern restaurant i can't remember. The Pret in T2 has a huge and comfortable seating area, and Wok was the best dining option we tried (admittedly, the competition is Burger King and 7-Eleven so the bar is low).

All the Choice branded Nordic Choice hotels are going to the fixed on the wall toiletries. Unfortunately, I find that these changes at the Nordic Choice hotels which used to have small bottle toiletries (as a standard in the rooms at given properties) has resulted in finding more hole damage on the bathroom walls, empty or missing dispensers, mislabeled or nearly empty dispensers. Call it another “environmental” initiative that really is part and parcel of a cost-cutting exercise to try and reduce cleaning staff costs and room-stocking costs. I have a suspicion that the mounted wall Rituals toiletries are being pumped like crazy by guests (who may be draining some wall-mounted bottles to take the contents home) or maybe even more obviously stolen by guests and/or others with access to the rooms/supply areas/carts.