CPH Hilton to Clarion
 

Just stayed at the (pretty nice, good lobby bar and excellent buffet breakfast) Hilton at CPH. I have stayed there in the past, and the excutive lounge is ok, but just that.

Staff told me that, starting April 1st, the Hilton will become a Clarion. Apparently the Copenhagen Airport Authority owns the property, and they put the management contract out to bid.

Report is that all staff will be retained, PLUS a lower-tier Choice property will be built next door.

Clarion at CPH may be the equivalent of a full service Hilton, but I am not holding my breath.

I noticed this change of ownership a few days ago and tried to book it as a Choice. Pretty complicated, had to call the Choice CS as it isn't offered online. They had to look for prices for a long while and then said confirmation would be in the mail. Still nothing though.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/27858855-post247.html

In that thread there may be some more info.

I'm curious to see what happens to room rates in this building.

Reply to Intuition and GUWonder -- I tried to do a dummy booking for many dates from mid-April 2017 through mid-April 2018, and the Choice system always gave me "Sold Out."

The staff member who gave me the information about the management change said that probably the executive lounge would close, but she didn't say anything about re-furbishing the hotel or closing it for renovation. They would not have it closed a year, in any case. The rooms I have stayed in (11th and 12th floors) are very nice, and don't need re-furbishing, in my mind.

As for rates: the rack rate right now for HH members is just over 200 USD which, for Denmark, is pretty good, I think. I suppose this will rise with Choice?

If this Choice hotel ends up sticking to the current Nordic Choice brand standards, the hotel is going to need to provide for a rather busy breakfast area of a sort it hasn't had to deal with since Hilton doesn't do what Nordic Choice's Clarion hotel does: Nordic Choice's Clarion hotels all offer included breakfast to all guests regardless of rate plan, elite status, etc.

I don't know if the rates as a Nordic Choice Clarion hotel will rise over the historical Hilton rates for this property. While it may happen, I am not sure it will be immediate.

For what it's worth, most of the times when I've seen reimbursements submitted for this hotel last year, the average amount pre-incidentals was closer to $230 than $200.

I was quoted a lower slightly higher price than that, but as I said they haven't sent me the confirmation.

The interesting thing is that Hilton accepts reservations past april 1, while Nordic Choice seems to have some serious issues doing that.

-- Added
Got the confirmation re-sent today, so it seems there was just a hickup.

Has anyone been able to redeem a Choice Privileges award night at this hotel?

The rooms are all blocked from such redemption for now and will likely to continue to be blocked for some months and then some at that. And even when they go online for such redemption, my bet is that they will charge 30k points per night -- 20k or 25k if we are very lucky -- and even then block most rooms from being available for redemption using these points.

Don't hold your breath waiting for them to be available using Choice Privileges points; it's going to be some time still before anyone can redeem those points directly for this property.

The paid rates I'm seeing for this property are higher than what I was seeing last year at this time. I'm not sure if that's an anomaly or if something else is going on. I do know that the redemption block is not an anomaly, as it's part of a practice in this area now.

The Quality View hotel (at Malmo-Hyllie in Sweden), 12 minutes from CPH, speaks volumes about the games going on currently in this regard. Even when the rates are under $80/night, no Choice Privileges point night bookings available most of those nights for as far as the eye can see -- and they ask for more than 20k/night for it when there is availability. That's where this program is going when it comes to new/relatively new Nordic Choice properties.

Loyaltylobby.com had some useful info that may be applicable to those of us using this property.

For Hilton elites, there is a status match program that may be of interest:

http://nordicchoicecampaigns.com/match-en/

Hilton Diamond gets Nordic Choice Platinum status. Hilton Gold gets Nordic Choice Gold status. The status is very useful to me.

Thank you for the status match information, GUWonder--very helpful post. :) I have a (Hilton-booked) stay at this hotel for this Friday night and just joined Nordic Choice and submitted my (lowly) Hilton Gold card to status match and hopefully push my Hertz status up, too!

The Gold benefits are very good too, including for the Hertz PC status. I like my Platinum status even more, as the benefit mix is very good for me. In most ways at this place, it's better as a NC Platinum customer than it was as Hilton Diamond customer. NC Golds will likely get treated quite well too.

The Exec Lounge is still open at this property but will be closed down by or soon after the end of this summer.

I stayed at this property many times as a Hilton over the years, and just finished my first stay since the Clarion rebranding.

Physically, the hotel is the same as it was before. No change in the furniture, although there were bottles of shampoo and other toiletries mounted on the walls rather than the Peter Thomas Roth products from before. My sense is that the maintenance of the rooms isn't up to the same standard - the shower head leaked out the side, some lights not working, scale in the water kettle.

The soft product is definitely different - music in the elevators, self-serve luggage carts, and a restaurant menu with zero local feel (I miss the smorrebrod and herring - I was a fan of the old buffet and bar/restaurant menu). We used to do training sessions at the Hilton Meetings facility - I'll have to check the catering menu before signing up again.

This is a convenient location, both for the airport and trains, and the rooms are still very nice. I'm just not sure this will be my base of operations at CPH any more.

Edit to add: the laundry service that the Clarion uses is also not up to snuff... I used to enjoy getting my shirts done at the Hilton, but wore one that the Clarion contractor washed the other day, and it just wasn't soft. Oh well.

Does anyone know if the old lounge is still operating and if so, to whom it is accessible nowadays? And has the "lower-tier Choice property" been built?

Shortly after the Nordic Choice take-over, I was invited to the lounge as a NC club platinum member. Haven't been there lately, so I don't know the situation now.

The NC web page for that property does not mention lounge at all.

-- Added
Oh, I believe GUWonder's post from 1,5 year ago answers this