Clarion Hotel® The Hub

Chaos and over-crowded is key words. Big lines all over, for check in, for check out, for elevators, for food etc etc. it serms the hotel can house more guests than their logistic lay-out can handel. So they lost all the vibe they could have had. Not a place I will visit again.

Hotel situated just in front of the train station. Rooms are tiny. Windows cannot be open. No storage space at all ( no wardrobe, shelves, drawers), that’s mean you can open your luggage only leaving it on the floor. Cleaning only every 2 days ( it means you’ll find you room in the evening exactly as you left it in the morning!). They say it is due to Covid but I guess how do they think this would better manage safety measures without a daily cleaning!) Breakfast was amazing BUT you’re allowed to have it at a scheduled time they choose for you (e. G. if no other time slots are left you must have breakfast at 6.30 or 7.00 even if you’re on vacation and just wanted to sleep a bit longer!) Pillows are too soft (down made) and they have no pillows choice to offer. You can have better for less in Oslo!

Situated just across the Oslo train station, within a 10-minute walk from the Opera, and near a large number of restaurants that serve until late. Spacious, clean rooms, and perhaps the most lavish breakfast buffet I have ever experienced.

I stayed at The Hub for 5 days mid of August 2021 - at a time when CoVid 7days incidence rate was about 55 (climbing rapidly) in Norway: Check-in in procedure: Slow - stand in line for about 15 Minutes (no guests around you wear any masks). You can check in electronically to reduce this time - ironically it does not help you at all, because after your contact-free electronic check-in you need to line up in the very same line in order to get your manual ticked for your breakfast slot. You need to do that every single day: Stand in line to get your breakfast ticket for the next days. Breakfast: They assign breakfast time slots in order to avoid too many people in the breakfast room. You need to get your ticket for the next day the prior day. Even if you get you try to get you ticket in the morning, the most favorite time slots are not available any longer. I wanted to have my Sunday breakfast at 9:00am - and could only chose 8:00am or 10:00am. Is this how you want to start your Sunday? I don’t.. The breakfast itself is excellent - tons of choices to chose from. BUT: It’s all served on open buffet tables (no spit protections) where people (without masks) basically step on each other. And when the door to the kitchen opens, you can see employees of the hotel preparing new plates: All wearing masks AROUND THEIR NECKS and not covering mouth or nose. Elevators: The biggest mess I ever witnessed. U have to type in your target floor number when approaching the elevators and you are assigned an elevator number. Then (in theory) the elevator arrives and drives you to you to you desired floor (there are no buttons to select a floor inside the elevator cabins). In practice things are different: For example on the breakfast (level 2) you see a crowd of 15 people waiting for elevators. You type in your desired floor number are assigned elevator A. After a few mins elevator A arrives packed with 10 guests already. So you let it go and type in your floor number again. The elevator doesn’t know that you did not enter and makes a stop at the programmed floor. That means: You need to wait forever for an elevator during rush hours and when you finally managed to find an elevator which is not packed with other guests, it makes useless extra stops (typed in by others who did not enter) and delays the whole system even more. My max waiting time was 14 minutes to get to the breakfast level and 15 minutes to get from ground level to my floor around 5pm (both rush hour). Needless to say that once in the elevator, you hear people swearing about the hotel, which after a few times doesn’t really help your own mood. Bars: Although there were 4 empty tables we had to wait 16 minutes until a waitress showed up on assigned one of the empty tables. There is a security guard in front of each bar, who keeps on repeating „Waitress will come, waitress will come“). Then after we placed our order it took another 35 minutes until we received our drinks. There were 18 guests in the entire bar at that time served 2 waitress and 1 bar tender - I could not see any reason for that extreme slow motion service. Room Cleaning: When you get to your room, you will find a note, that room cleaning starts on day 2 after you arrival due to CoVid and lack of stuff. Reality: Within 5 days (4 nights) they only cleaned my room once. The Room: I had a „superior room“, which was described as "Our superior double rooms are nice and spacious (from 24 sqm) and feature a double bed (160cm) with luxury duvets and pillows, as well as windows that allow in plenty of daylight“. The window was extremely small - see picture. If they consider this as windows which allow plenty of daylight, I don’t want to know what their other rooms/windows look like. Also worth to mention: Unlike any other hotel I know, you have to lock your room electronically every time you leave, because the door remains open. See picture. Checkout: Checkout time is 11am. I asked for a „late Sunday check out at 11:45am“. The receiptionist didn’t even ask for your status level but immediately responded: „Sorry, no way, we are fully booked out and we need your room at 11am“. That was it: I cancelled my reservation for the following 2 days trip and went to another hotel in the same area. That hotel had the same After-Lockdown problems regarding not enough employees, but solved them in a much better way: They only sell 50% of their rooms and you get a daily beverage credit of 100NOKS for „any incomplete hotel services“ at this time. Bottomline: If you neither have the organizational nor the stuff capacity to sell out all rooms, then don’t sell every single room. This is not to be blamed on any employees of the hotel, who all tried to smile und be polite despite all the complains and the stress, but on top management decisions. I am sure this kind of management strategy won’t pay out and they well lose more on the long run, then they profit short sightened by simply overloading the hotel with guests during a pandemic. I attached a few pics - I guess they speak for themselves.

The Hub is located at one of Oslo's absolute best addresses. Delicious design and environment that inspires. Easy to understand that very big money has been invested in this prestige hotel. With this knowledge, it is completely incomprehensible that staff are not trained and motivated. Have never experienced such low service consciousness. The staff feel completely uneducated and unaware of what is expected of a hotel where a single room costs over 200 euros. Undoubtedly a hotel that is in need of a completely new leadership where what is obvious to everyone, personal service, is developed to a decent level. As it is now, all other hotels are a better option than The Hub.