cyberg

I just stayed in the Bergen hotel as well and was offered the same room type as the poster above, pointed out to desk clerk I had reserved double bed suite and was told my reservation did not indicate a suite was reserved. Did get moved to larger room with two double beds but certainly not a suite. I am presently in Goteborg Sweeden and reserved suite for 10,000 points, was given two room suite seperate bedroom and large living room with kitchen Bang & Olfsen stereo etc. Real suite deal! I have to agree Bergen was nice however and dinner buffet well worth it.

sdsearch

The Bergen hotel's suite, even if any of us did get it, is not necessarily a two-room suite. In fact, I still haven't figured out what makes it a suite, nor what wonders make it cost $2900. If you read the description of the room that costs $2900, it makes it seem like it's more of just some sort of "superior" room than what other hotels would call a "suite". (Of course, it could just be a horrid online description.)

How was the suite you reserved in Goteborg described on the website?

soitgoes

There are some panoramic tours of various rooms on the choicehotels.no website:
http://www.action-photo.no/player/cl...ekontoret.html

sdsearch

Thanks! The room I was "downgraded" to looks a lot like the "Familie suite 529" on that page (it might have been a slightly smaller version with one less chair, I can't remember for sure).

I presume the $2900ish suite I didn't get is the "Veidung suiten", which has two panormic views devoted to it, so seems to be two huge rooms (despite no mention of that in the room description when you're reserving)?

If that's it, no wonder they tried to avoid giving it to me at whatever Choice must reimburse them for a 16k points reward stay.

(Now that I've seen it, while it would have been amazing, I'm not sure it would have been as practical as the room I got, for my one-day/two-night stay where I ddin't spend much time in the room anyway.)

Does Choice currently lack the ability to have different points redemptions for different types of rooms? Their language "rooms from 16k points" seems to suggest some rooms would be more expensive, but if a $2900ish room doesn't cost more points than the $200..$300ish rooms do, I don't know what would?

ftnoob

The "from" language to which you refer is likely because points charged are seasonal at many properties. I think all US properties I have viewed online the past year or so have three different lines in the "Points Required" section of their "Hotel Home" page. The ones I am seeing now are May 16-Sep 15; Sep 16-Nov 15; Nov 16-Mar 15. All three lines are listed even when the property charges a constant number of points year-round, IIRC.

soitgoes

`No. There's only one point level per hotel/time period (some hotels have seasonal rates). However, hotels can exclude certain room categories from being bookable on points. Not all of them seem to do so...

cyberg

I am currently in Malmo Sweden and again reserved a suite that could accomodate "3 people with a pullout couch and four with an extra bed" however there was no pullout couch and I was placed in the smallest room I have ever been in, as someone who spends in excess of 200 nights a year in hotels this came as a real shock. I spoke to the desk clerk and she brought out the manager who informed me something must have been lost in the translation when I booked the room. I informed her I booked the room on line and hoped her computer could talk to mine and showed her what my reservation stated. She agreed to move us to little larger room with a balcony but certainly not a suite.

My point is if they are not going to book you in a suite don't show it as available and disapoint the customer. Pictures of the suites for all hotels are available at http://www.choicehotels.no/hotels/ho...en&language=da

That being said I have used points for 17 night stays thru Scandinavia and have been very satisfied always staying in Clarion Collection hotels. You can really save a lot of money with breakfast and dinner included each night, just don't expect to stay in a suite, even if it appears to be available

soitgoes

It seems like a lot of non-US Choice hotels are not hooked in to the Choice system in any sort of integrated way. Some of them just get an e-mail when there are new reservations, cancellations, or changes, and it's up to them to enter it into their in-house reservation system. All sorts of weird things can happen in that process.

gaidamak

Do all Clarion Collection hotels in Scandinavia include breakfast and dinner using points?

I am planning a 11 night stay in Denmark and Sweden and already booked some Choice hotels. I may change my mind and rebook most of them to Clarions, if this is true.

soitgoes

It seems that many of the Clarion Collection hotels in Scandinavia do have an evening buffet. I don't know if they all do.

I am not aware of any of the larger Clarions (non-Collection) that have an evening buffet. I think you'll need to take a look at each individual property page on choicehotels.com and/or choicehotels.se to see for the properties you are interested in.

EDIT: According to this page all of the Clarion Collection hotels (in Scandinavia) have an evening buffet; in Denmark, the buffet is a "smaller snack buffet".

sdsearch

Any non-laboriuos way to find the Clarion Collection hotels in the US?

I have a printed Choice 2008 Worldwide Hotel DIrectory and Atlas. In the back are terse listings for Europe and Asia/Pacific, and I can tell from that there's no Clarion Collection hotels in Europe except for Scandinavia plus one in the UK (London Hyde Park), but there are a number of them in Asia/Pacific. There are hundreds of pages for the US, and the only reason I know that Clarion Collection exists in the US is because in the front of the book the have a pair of pages for Clarion Collection, and there they have the Inn of the Year and International Inn of the Year. The Clarion Collection Inn of the Year is Norfolk Lodge & Suites in Norfolk NE (Nebraska)!

But I can find no mention of Clarion Collection on the US Choice web page! So far all I know, lazy me (who doesn't feel like trolling through hundreds of pages for a tiny logo) thinks there could be only this one!

christianj

I have wondered about this in the past too and never found a way to find them. What I ended up doing was going to tripadvisor.com and searching for "clarion collection usa" and approx. 60 or so properties showed up. I then looked through them to see if a hotel met my needs for location, etc. Not the quickest was to do it but that's all I can recommend.

soitgoes

If you download the e-directory (http://www.choicehotels.com/ires/en-US/html/EDirectory), you can search by brand and country. Clarion and Clarion Collection are lumped together under Clarion, but it's still pretty easy to see all the US Clarion Collections.

A quick search and scan--
CA 7
FL 3
MO 2
NY 7

and one each in:
CT, CO, DE, IL, MD, MI, NC, NE, NV, NJ, PA, SC, RI, TX, UT, VA, WI

cyberg

Actually all the clarion collection include breakfast and Dinner and a three hour tea time from 3 to 6 each day. I just spent 17 nights in Clarion Colection hotels in Norway Sweden and Denmark. Some have better offerings than most but my wife and I found the food while nothing gourmetish, certainly very clean and edible. Clarion hotels only include breakfast in rate. Good deal for points is Malmo, just accross bridge from Copenhagen, nice old town with hotel very central. Good breakfast and dinner and only 8,000 points

hobo13

I just booked the Clarion Bergen Havnekontoret in the 1-room suite. Is there any definitive word on whether this really IS a suite? Does a suite exist? How can I get it? I have 2 infants, so a suite (as in separate living and sleeping rooms) is really beneficial.

Considering that the 'suite' goes for more money (if a revenue booking) than a regular room, I want to believe it has some uniqueness! Plus, there is a photo of a suite on their website: Photo of sitting area


(And sorry to bump an ancient thread, but it sort of seemed to be the most relevant.)