Clarion Hotel® The Edge

We stayed for 4 nights end of December with our adult kids in a fjord view and a sea view rooms. The fjord view is one of the best hotel room view you can have and the first night I woke up at least 20 times hoping to catch northern lights through the window. This is also perfect location for northern lights tours as they pickup literally few feet across the street from the hotel. Hotel is also in the heart of it all so you can walk to restaurants, pubs, harbor, Pust sauna. There’s a 711 close by to pick up water and snacks, and great coffee shop around the corner. The first night, dinner was a buffet at hotel’s Social bar & bistro and was decent. Made reservations before arrival and it’s advisable. Breakfast is great with a widespread. Recommend Yonas pizza and Rorbua pub nearby. Booked two northern lights tours (Northern Horizon & Northern Soul and we were fortunate to see great display both nights). Tromso Outdoor is walkable for rentals but for extra charge they dropped off and picked up from the hotel which was convenient for us given the flight times. Tromso is lovely and polar nights time is just magical. You can also buy a polar certificate at the concierge desk in the hotel.

In fairness this was booked as part of a tour package, and not independently. Negatives: our initial room was so small, no way 2 people plus luggage could be comfortable for a 2 night stay. Wifi was appalling. Either there was no service or it was cutting out. The ‘breakfast box’ supplied to our tour group for an early departure was inedible. Staff attitude was at best disinterested and at worst just rude. There was no wardrobe or storage space in the original compact or upgraded room. We registered to join the Clarion ‘Strawberry Group’ loyalty club, only to find at our next venue, the registration hadn’t been actioned. Positives: We did negotiate an upgrade to a larger room with the help of our Tour leader, but cost an extra AU$160. In the ‘upgraded’ room the TV didn’t work, and was not fixed despite reporting it immediately. The inbuilt USB chargers also didn’t work. Discussions between our travelling companions on checkout revealed that some had been upgraded free of charge to the larger deluxe rooms, so we were disappointed to find we paid extra for the same ‘upgrade’. If we were to ever book accomodation in Tromso for ourselves, this property would be last on the list. It is NOT a venue for the discerning traveller.

Fantastic breakfasts but the room was a peculiar shape because of the design of the building. Location was perfect.

Stayed in a Junior Suite for 4 nights. The hotel is in great location overlooking the scenic waterfront, located just directly across the port terminal which is the assembly point of most Northern Lights chase tours. Our room was spacious and had a good view of the harbour. The room was generally clean. Buffet breakfast offered a good varieties of food. Though there were 3 coffee machines available, only one machine had more coffee choices whereas the other 2 only offered black coffee. Hence there was always a long queue for that one and only coffee machine. There was a complimentary coffee and tea station just outside a conference room. We always enjoyed a cup of hot coffee/tea upon returning back from the freezing cold outdoors. Everything was fine except that for unknown reasons the housekeeper always only replenished with 2 sets of bath towel after each day’s room cleaning, despite there were 3 of us staying in the room and the extra bed gave a clear evidence that there was a third person. We always had to go down to the Reception to request for another set of towel. If this only happened on the very first housekeeping it was fine, but it happened everyday throughout our stay! We were truly speechless and we could only say that the housekeepers certainly did not have eyes to details or simply being oblivious. Another star was deducted as we didn’t think the Front Office associates were very friendly and helpful. On our booking we had explicitly requested for all chargeable items in the minibar to be removed. On day of check-in we made this same request again but instead the staff who checked us in demanded to know what was the reason that we did not want the minibar items. Told the staff that we didn’t need the items offered by the hotel and prefer to store our own drinks in the fridge instead. We were then told to remove the items out from the fridge ourselves and just leave the items on the coffee counter. Till we check-out, nobody was sent to clear away the minibar items. This was the very first hotel that we had encountered to refuse our request to remove minibar items.

We recently stayed here for 2 nights. It had a great location facing the water but the interior felt a bit dated. Part of the lighting in our bathroom was out. We reported it during our stay and it was never fixed. The breakfast buffet was enormous and delicious!