"We were quite disappointed with this hotel, particularly given the high price and the purported high end caliber. We found the staff to be almost aggressively unfriendly. I am used to luxury hotels being if anything overly friendly, almost to the point of obsequiousness; no such problem here! Not once in a 5 day stay were we greeted as we returned or left the hotel. Some of the cleaning people were a little bit friendly, at least they said “good morning” or whatever when you walked by them, but the front desk must have gone out of their way to hire dour personalities! To be fair, any questions were answered professionally, albeit coldly. But there was never a second that we felt like valued guests.
While cleaning people seemed a bit warmer, they didn’t exactly knock us out with the job they did. Whenever we left a dirty glass on the table (say from getting a glass of wine from the bar in the evening), it was left there until we returned it ourselves. Coming back to a supposedly clean room and finding dirty glasses was a real turn off. We had to call for a box of Kleenex since they didn’t check and notice it was empty. The mini fridge wasn’t cold so we had to call for a repair (which was done promptly). When we called to have someone pick up some laundry we wanted done (at a very high price but that’s Iceland, I guess), we were told to take it ourselves to the front desk. As it was around 9:30 in the morning and we had to turn it in by 10:00, I had to get dressed (pre-shower) and trudge to the lobby to turn it in. Luxury hotel?
I would not mark a review down because of design choices, but I will say I did not like the cold style of this hotel. Very Scandinavian but without the warm touches that one might hope for (I believe it is called hygge). The room itself had very little storage. That might be fine if you are staying for a night or two but we were there for 5 nights and had to live out of our suitcases. Even the nightstands were big cold marble blocks with no drawers or room to set things on. The table in the room was just that, a table with no drawers or storage.
Lastly, we were dismayed to be told we could not charge anything to our room (previously mentioned glass of wine from the bar for example) nor could we collect IHG points (one reason I booked this hotel) because we booked it through the Chase Travel Portal with our Chase Sapphire Reserve card. We were effectively told that since we booked through a 3rd party, we would be treated as second class guests. I guess I considered a high end credit card as something more desireable than discount aggregators, say, Expedia or its ilk. Now this may be a matter to take up with Chase, but it left a bad taste. Funnily enough, we ended our trip at a Hilton Garden Inn at Heathrow airport on the way home, and it was 100 times better in almost all ways than this supposedly high end Hilton property.
On the positive side, the location was fabulous. Very convenient. My bottom line is that this would be an ok place to stay for a maximum of of 2 nights but there are many hotels in this area and I would recommend choosing one of those. This place does seem to attract the cruise ship population, probably for the night before embarkation stays. Every day the lobby was crowded with cruise ship check in desks. In those cases, I suppose it makes sense to stay there for the cruise ship benefits."
