The Amerikalinjen hotel is one of a handful of Strawberry Hotels that can be booked with Choice Privileges points either directly through Choice’s website, or indirectly through Preferred Hotels & Resorts. This hotel costs only 20,000 points per night when booked directly through Choice Privileges vs. 45,000 points when booked through Prefered Hotels. So, of course, I booked through Choice. Another highly regarded hotel in Oslo, The Thief, is available to book either through Choice or through Preferred Hotels for the same 20,000 Choice points per night. We booked the Amerikalinjen because of its location right across the street from the central train station. We arrived in Oslo by train and departed by train two days later, so the Amerikalinjen was perfect.
Amerikalinjen Hotel Bottom Line Review
My stay at the Amerikalinjen Hotel was terrific. Even though I had booked with Choice points and don’t have elite status with Choice or with Strawberry hotels, we were proactively upgraded from a standard to a Superior room. While it wasn’t huge, it was beautifully appointed. Its tremendously high ceiling added to its glamour. The hotel’s location is perfect: It’s an easy walk from the hotel to many tourist sights, and it is very close to a metro stop for venturing farther. And for those arriving or departing by train (like we did), it’s directly across the street from the station. Breakfast is a highlight here. It is included for free with all bookings and we found the variety and quality to be excellent. Amazingly, you can optionally choose to have your free breakfast brought to you as room service. I would very happily stay here again.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Perfect location
- Stylish and elegant
- Comfortable beds
- High ceilings
- Free breakfast
- Can order from menu plus grab from buffet
- Excellent quality all around
- Can choose free room service breakfast instead!
Cons
- Standard rooms are small
Photo Gallery
Superior Room
Breakfast
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It’s ok. I really regret not being able too check out a jazz performance in the club because I had to leave early. But the rooms are indeed small, and overall I think the hotel is a bit overrated, trying to hard to be trendy at the cost of genuine comfort.
Will be in Oslo later this year and looked at this hotel but since there are no rooms with 2 beds, my friends and I have to pass. Fortunately there are lots of other “choices” to spend our Choice points.
If you book a room in Oslo using Choice points on the basis of what Choice says is the maximum room occupancy for the room type booked and expect to have sufficient bedding set in the room when you check-in and get given the room keys, then my suggestion is to contact the hotel directly the day before arrival or early on the day of check-in and confirm that they know the room is for X number of persons who need bedding in the room.
If the room is to be occupied by only two people, then it’s not a problem as much as when the room is to be occupied by 3 or more people at Choice hotels in the region.
I booked here early in the year using choice points thanks to the information on this site/podcast! I didn’t have points but was able to buy them for 50% off which made this stay a great deal. Note, if you have an early train to catch before breakfast starts they will pack you a breakfast to go if you let them know the night before. We loved it there, thanks FM!
This is why I still love Choice Privileges. The bright spots in an otherwise mediocre program.
Choice have been devaluing the points for hotel use in Scandinavia within the last several months. And it was unrelated to reimbursement rates for award nights. I would be more surprised if there aren’t more sudden and no-advance-notice devaluations coming in this regard. This is why I am quickly running down my Choice point balances — including points bought via DailyGetaways earlier this quarter. But the going is good for now: such as having redeemed 16k-20k points for hotels in Stockholm when the city’s major brand hotels were sold out or nearly sold out and the remaining major brands’ hotels in the city were ridiculously expensive or way out of the way for say most American tourists in town.
I have been using 16k/20k Choice points to land hotels this month at an extremely good value on nights of big events in Stockholm, Malmo and elsewhere in Scandinavia this spring. Amazingly, my upgrade rate — as a Strawberry Platinum — on Choice award stays is amazing and I’ve been living the “suite” life on it.
Posted yet again from a Strawberry/Nordic Choice hotel using Choice points.
It’s my opinion that while Strawberry Hotels could ultimately decide to further devalue points stays at any time, this will not come soon. Hotels like the Sign Hotel and the Hotel C in Stockholm had a 60% increase in points rates and the Temperance Hotel in Malmo increased by 100%. These are massive devaluations on a percentage basis, yet even at the greatly inflated rates, they still represent a fantastic value. It’s my belief that when Strawberry took over Nordic Choice, these huge points devaluations were strategically designated to front end load the long term plans to become more profitable rather than facilitate a slow steady increase in nightly points rates.
They can indeed still provide fantastic value, something I exploit to the greatest advantage and probably more than any Choice program user out there.
It’s not Strawberry hotels that devalued the Choice points in the last several months. It was Choice in the US that decided to devalue the points like that.
The points have gotten so devalued in both the Choice program and the Strawberry program, that I increasingly find it a better value to book regular paid rates on more and more nights at Scandinavian hotels. This isn’t to say that there aren’t still a lot of great opportunities to get fantastic value out of Choice points in Scandinavia but it’s to indicate that both Choice and Strawberry are on course to make points way less rewarding so strike gold by using the points sooner than later.
Forgot to mention that for a brief while within the last several months Amerikalinjen was completely pulled as a Choice hotel option using Choice points. I never got an explanation for what went on there but I had never seen that kind of thing go on with the other hotels in NCC/Strawberry that are not Choice brand name hotels. [Talking about hotels such as Villa Copenhagen, Copperhill, Amerikalinjen, Thief, and those ones that were sometimes referred to as the “Nordic Hotels” or “Nordic Resorts” instead of as Nordic Choice Hotels.] Fortunately it came back as a Choice Hotel award option (as distinct from Preferred H&R award option).
Thanks for the review Greg! I’m looking forward to my 2 upcoming Strawberry / Choice hotels in Helsinki and Stockholm.
Did you buy Choice Points via Daily Getaways or did you transfer points in from Citi or Wells Fargo?
I did buy points via Daily Getaways, but I had already booked this with points I had from before (mostly old Radisson points that converted to Choice)
Gotcha, that makes sense. I used up my Choice Points (from Radisson Rewards) last summer and was lucky enough to snag one of the 42K or 44K Choice packages this year.
U did go to the Vigelund park/museum, jä?
Yep