zxcv1

Stay away from Sokoshotels. Terrible. Never again. I have stories one wouldn't believe can be true at a 100 eur/night hotel.

Hiltons in Helsinki are good, albeit all a bit worn down. Fiskis is generally awesome, but with stiff staff who treat old people with respect but have some problems serving younger guests. Strand is in need of renovation. Hilton Helsinki Airport has great staff and overall quite good. All treat Diamonds well in terms of upgrades. Going for HHonours Diamond is now easy, and I recommend it.

FFlash

See how experiences vary😁namely I have just an opposite treatments on all these😂

mpkz

Yeah, it's quite random.. got a (very) late checkout + executive floor at a Hilton, then nothing at another Hilton, late checkout at a Four Points Sheraton, nothing at AC by Marriott. Can't quite figure it out. Sometimes they explicitly advertise that you get wine or something but I never bother with that, that has zero value for me.

GUWonder

Maybe it�s an age thing. Maybe it�s different for a whippersnapper staying at hotels where some staff didn�t expect to see such young plebes as myself come in the door to stay, and so the treatment really covered a much wider range of initial interactions than has come to be the case in the years since?

I have noticed that upgrades at hotels in the Nordics seem better on accounts with non-Nordic addresses when it comes to Nordic-heavy hotels� own hotel programs. And I�ve also noticed the US hotel programs� account with Nordic addresses tend to do somewhat better with upgrades than comparable accounts with US addresses. Not sure why it may have turned out that way, but maybe this is akin to when some airlines had reps who were more likely provide complimentary or IRROP upgrades to partner elites in economy than to their own.

WilcoRoger

Now that was painless and in 1 week it went thru. Hotels.com Gold, howzat?

Mister P.

Hi,
Is it possible to transfer Nordic Choice Hotels points to Finnair Plus or just the other way around? Thanks

GUWonder

But from a quick look, I didn't see anything about transferring Nordic Choice Club points into Finnair points, and that was by looking quickly on Finnairshop.com and on nordicchoicehotels.com.

FFlash

Never tried but if it works, hooray

intuition

No, it can't be done. The partnership is
A) AY-points can be transferred to Noric Choice
B) Points earned from NC stays can be credited to AY+ instead of crediting to NC program. No transfer of existing points.

Mister P.

Ok, thanks! Is there any other hotel program that allows transfers to Finnair? (Besides Marriott)

intuition

I think Accor ALL can be transferred to AY plus

ffay005

At least in theory. My conversion request from October, and a stay in October (I changed the settings so that points will automatically convert to AY+ after each stay) haven't shown up in my AY account.

intuition

The transfer of existing points worked in 2019



But in pandemic times, loyalty programs apparently is observing "social distance" and must avoid contact with each other... Because nothing seems to work now.
I wouldn't do any kind of offline transfers these days, programs are not to be trusted anymore. I only do online transfers, ie where the transfer is done in real time and committed to both programs simultaneous. AY isn't even on the playfield.


BTW, the Accor-autotransfers worked perfectly in 2015 when I had it set up. Oh, those were the days. AY and Accor did some events and I was at a French wine and cheese meeting in Stockholm, on their tab. They tossed Platinums from both programs together and it was a very nice evening.

Mister P.

Thanks for the update! Any other way to secure / transfer points to Finnair Plus? I am 4,000 points short of an intra-European upgrade. Have been waiting for a couple of Iberia flights (D) to post for almost 6 months but nothing. Have sent all the travel documents but Finnair says they are still waiting to hear back from Iberia. Thanks

TTL

For being a diamond member and having stayed at Hilton Helsinki Airport several dozen times... the minimum is a corner suite with sauna, and sometimes a larger family room with sauna, or a suite with sauna department. But anyway, the rooms in that venue are very decent also without upgrades. And the executive lounge continues to be very satisfactory even with opening hours.