Location, Value, and Service: Review of Hotel Havnekontoret in Bergen, Norway
The outside of beautiful Hotel Havnekontoret. If you stay in Bergen, it’s hard to find a better option than this hotel! Photo by: Evan Berman
I spent 1 night in Bergen, Norway. One of the best hotel brands in Scandinavia is Nordic Choice Hotels. This includes the Choice brands that you may be familiar with, such as Comfort Hotels (such as Comfort Hotel Karl Johan in Oslo), and higher end Clarion and Ascend Collection hotels. I opted to stay in beautiful Bryggen and redeemed Choice points I purchased to pay for my stay.
Hotel Havnekontoret was terrific, in value, service, and location. The recap of this hotel is a part of the larger Nordic Expedition. For more on this trip, follow these links:
Flight: Delta Comfort+, CHS-JFK
Flight: Norse Airways Economy, JFK-OSL
Flight: Norwegian Economy, OSL-BGO
Hotel: Clarion Collection Hotel Havnekontoret, Bergen, Norway (This Article)
Hotel: Comfort Karl Johan, Oslo, Norway
A Whale of a Meal, Tromsø, Norway Restaurants
Hotel: Clarion Collection Hotel Aurora, Tromsø, Norway
Hotel: Clarion Collection Hotel With, Tromsø, Norway
Flight: Norse Atlantic Airways Economy: OSL-JFK
Flight: Delta Economy, LGA-CHS
Intro:
Choice Hotels offers great value on hotels in Scandinavia and Japan. With a fixed award chart and high cash prices, you usually find a deal on staying in high-end hotels. Hotel Havnekontoret fits those criteria and I loved my stay!
Review:
The hotel is in Bryggen, the UNESCO World Heritage neighborhood in Bergen, Norway. If you visit Bergen, you will stop here so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to stay in that area. I was not dissappointed!
Booking:
For those of us based in the US, it may be strange to hear Choice Hotels be synonymous with luxury. Choice Hotels in the US feature mainly mid-tier and lower-tier hotels. However, Nordic Choice Hotels are some of the nicest hotels in Scandinavia.
I purchased 44,200 Choice Points for $350.20 and transferred 15,800 points from Capital One for a total of 60,000 points.
Price: 16,000 Choice Points
Rewards: N/A, booked with points
Value:
As mentioned above, I booked this hotel for 16,000 Choice Points. One night costs $207 via the Choice website or $185 via booking.com. As such, I got 1.29 cents per point for the purchased points. Had I not been able to use points, I would’ve likely booked a different hotel for approximately $120 a night.
9/10, Great. I’ve had better redemptions (over 2 cents per point is common with Hyatt and I’ve gotten 2 cents per point from Hilton as well). That being said, this is a luxury hotel that I booked for 16k points or $126.77. This is great value!
View:
The points rate unfortunately did not allow for selecting a room with a view. As such, I was not treated to a view of Bergen’s Harbor. That being said, the view of the cobblestones and the Radisson Blu was a pleasant sight.
9/10, Great. I’ve stayed in rooms with better views, but I enjoyed looking at the cobblestones and seeing the people walking about outside.
Service:
The service was top notch. From the moment I arrived, I was made to feel welcome. A bit frazzled since I had misplaced my passport, the agent was very kind and asked how she could help. When I returned to the hotel later that night, she again checked on me and made sure she helped however she could. This kind and unnecessary gesture is just one example of the terrific service at the hotel!
The other agents were equally friendly and kind and I found their friendliness and generosity to be staggering– and hopefully something American hotels can take note of!
As you can tell from the photo above and below, the staff left little notes wishing the guest a nice stay (and day). A chocolate bar is a tasty way to say that you value your guests.
11/10, Above and Beyond. The service was exceptional, some of the best I have ever received. It can be tricky to balance warmth with professionalism, but the staff at the Hotel Havnekontoret nailed it.
Location:
As I’ve said before, location is subjective. That being said, I’m not sure how location can get much better than this. Bryggen is the 2nd or 3rd stop in downtown Bergen from the Airport Express train, depending on which exit you take. Bryggen is beautiful and you are located next to the famous row houses, as well as across the street from the harbor.
Downtown Bergen is only a 5-10 minute walk away and the Castle and museum which commemorate Norway’s occupation during WWII and the history of Bergen are both also only 5 minutes away.
10/10, Excellent.
Bathroom:
This is one area where I felt both blown away and underwhelmed. The floors were heated to 27° C (roughly 81° F) but I could not find any way to turn this feature off, or control the temperature. I did only spend a minute trying though, so it may be easy to adjust.
There was a bathtub and the showerhead had a detachable faucet which was fortunately raised high enough to allow for tall people to wash their hair. I’m assuming because Nordic people are generally tall, they are more sensitive to this issue! 🙂
As with many of these types of showers, you need to pull down on the bath faucet to get the water to come down from overhead. Otherwise, if you wish to take a bath, it is set up to automatically pour a bath.
However, there was no door to seal the bathtub from the bathroom floor and the glass pane was not flush against the half wall beyond the bathtub. The pane was also adjustable. All of this to say, I found it impossible to keep the water in the shower. Both times that I showered, the bathroom floor was quite wet. This is obviously a design choice as there is a drain on the floor outside of the tub.
9/10, Great. While heated floors are an amenity I didn’t know I so desired, the inability to prevent the bathroom floor from being soaked by the shower does detract.
Furnishings:
This room had two double beds, as requested. As I was travelling solo, this was not a big deal, but with the recent experience of requesting two beds and only being given one at Canal Loft in mind, I gave this more consideration than I may have previously!
The beds were extremely comfortable and I enjoyed how the pillows had different firmnesses, allowing you to enjoy the proper amount of support based on your preferred setup. There was only a duvet covering, no sheets. Based on my other experiences, I’m assuming Norway does not do sheets on hotel beds. Any Norwegian readers want to clear that up for me?
Additionally, there were two comfortable chairs located near the windows. I was pleased by the comfort and location. For one meeting that I took, I sat in one of these chairs and felt quality back support— which is unfortunately a rare occurrence.
9/10, Great.
Electronics:
As you can tell, the TV in this room is quite large. I didn’t bother exploring the channel, but suffice it to say, this should be more than adequate for those that wish to catch up on their shows while in the room.
The wifi was more than adequate. I had a brief Zoom meeting that I attended and the connection was as good as being at home! As would be the case with the other Choice hotels, there was no wifi password.
10/10, Excellent. If you care about the lack of a password with your wifi (I recommend you use a VPN), then you might rate this lower. That being said, the speed was great and for those who wish to watch tv, the screen seemed a good size.
Housekeeping:
I only stayed for 1 night, thus had no need for housekeeping. That being said, the room was immaculate, cleaner than I think I’ve ever seen a hotel room.
N/A
Food and Drink:
Hotel Havnekontoret provides a dinner service each night as well as a breakfast in the mornings. While I did not taste the breakfast, the dinner was very good. There was a buffet of sorts set up where you could take as much food as you wish.
In fact, the sign (in true sustainable/Scandinavian fashion) said, “please take as much as you like but leave no waste.”
I had the baked fish, some fresh vegetables, a salad with chickpeas, some mushroom rice pilaf, green beans, and bread with their whipped butter. In all, the food was quite tasty.
10/10, Excellent. Enjoying a free full meal in Norway means saving at least $20-$30 and possibly much more.
Overall:
10/10, Excellent.
I greatly enjoyed my stay in Bergen. The town was magical and the hotel was great. The service is tremendous, location is sublime, and the price is hard to beat, at least with points. I would highly recommend redeeming 16,000 Choice Points (either by purchasing them as I did or by transferring from Capital One, Citi (at a 1:2 ratio), or AmEx) per night at this hotel.
While there were flaws such as the inability to control the temperature (at least that I could find) and I’ve had better views, the other areas were more than enough to make up for these minor flaws. That’s all for Bergen, stay tuned for my eventful flight back to Oslo via Stavanger and the next part of this great trip!
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