Marissa Denehy
Google
We loved the size and layout of the room. The beds were soft and the staff were excellent. In an expensive country like Norway, we also appreciated that breakfast and dinner were included in our stay and was rather tasty and had lots of variety. Overall, we’d give this place enthusiastic thumbs up.
However, there are definitely elements within the control of the hotel that could have made the experience better. First, in 2024, it baffles me that hotels still can’t figure out how to strengthen the WiFi in the rooms. It’s free WiFi, but it’s trash unless you’re in the lobby.
Second, upon arrival, we were disappointed to find that our lovely harbor view (the largest reason we decided to stay at this hotel) was completely obstructed by a massive cruise ship. The hotel is like 10 meters from the waters edge, so you could practically touch the ship from our hotel window. Why the cruise-goers experience is so much more important than the folks who choose to spend money and stay in town, I’ll never understand. The boat stayed until 10PM, so no twilight views of the water and then right as we were trying to sleep, we had to endure all the commotion of the ship leaving. The folks staying on the ship couldn’t even be bothered to eat dinner in town, even though they were docked for the entirety of dinner time (the harbor restaurants were all but empty during that time). In walking through the old historic part of town on the hill, we encountered numerous signs of locals advocating for the ships to go away. Why doesn’t Stavanger government and the hotels advocate for the residents and the people actually spending money in the harbor area? The ships could easily anchor a kilometer or two out of the harbor, boat their passengers in for the day trips as many other ports do and everyone would be happier. Seems like a simple solution.
Finally, and this is a smaller issue, but the rooms can get stuffy if you don’t have the window open. We actually love that we can have the windows open when we travel abroad, but at this particular hotel, people would smoke right under the windows and the smoke would waft in regularly. As an asthmatic, that was very frustrating. Our options were to endure 2nd hand smoke, or endure a stuffy room until the smokers were gone. Hotel can easily ask smokers to smoke across the street.
We still rate the hotel 4 stars, but would caution those staying here to make sure your expectations are set for a possible smoky room, cruise ship obstructed view and bad WiFi.