Skaret By Vander — Hotel in Tromsø

TL,DR: The place is clearly run for the convenience of Vander/Bjorvika, and not with the guest in mind. Their limited office hours can cause some real headaches, as they did for me. If you can overlook the numerous shortcomings, those on a budget may enjoy their stay here. . I'll start with the pluses for our 3 night stay in the one bedroom apartment: • Very spacious and well-priced • Modern design and generally well appointed with quality finishes • Grocery store around the corner is super convenient • Fully sealed room doors and good sound isolation from other rooms (not so much from the gulls or people shouting outside late at night) • Really comfortable down duvet (but terrible mattress pad) • Vander office staff seem friendly and respond relatively quickly to emails during business hours (but follow through on commitments made did not happen) . And sadly, a long list of cons: • The place is clearly run for the convenience of Vander/Bjorvika, and not with the guest in mind. On the weekends, the office is only open 10-18 so good luck to anybody that needs to get a hold of hotel staff outside of these hours. On the morning of our check-out, I ran into a woman frantically running around trying to find someone to help. She had set off the fire alarm using the toaster and couldn't get a hold of anyone. The fire department came and the elevators would not work for a while, delaying our trip to the airport. There is a security company they have contracted with for after-hours emergencies, but they are only reachable by phone and it's not for room-related issues. • The check-in lock box requires access to text messaging on check-in day. The office promised to email me instead since I was on a data only plan but they did not follow through with this • We were promised early check-in if a room was available. But when we got there, the front desk person had zero desire to accommodate. He refused to even email when our room was ready, and went as far as lying about getting off shift soon (he was there many hours later) and refused to ask the next person on shift to email us • The pullout couch in our room was not set up despite our booking being for 3 people. We didn't realize there was no extra bedding in the room until just after 18:00 and could not get a hold of anyone. Two of us ended up having to share a single-sized duvet for the first night and I slept really badly, affecting my entire time in Tromso. • The next morning, my wife got a hold of one of the cleaning staff and was offered a USED duvet from one of the rooms that was being cleaned and was told "well the duvet has clothes on them anyway." EWWWW - makes me wonder what they actually wash when turning over the room • Room was missing some key items such as salt, cooking oil and sufficient toilet paper (only 2 rolls provided) which would have been convenient for shorter stays otherwise it's wasteful and expensive to buy them for just a few days. For longer stays, they don't clean your room for the first 10 days and no vacuum cleaner is provided • Electronic deadbolt was not working • Laundry is 30 NOK each for washing or drying (60 NOK in total for one load). No mention was made of a charge when I booked. There are only two washers and two dryers for the entire complex. Using their laundry detergent is mandatory and it has quite a strong smell. Make sure you select the "extra dry" option when drying otherwise you'll be forking over an extra 30 NOK. • Noise coming in through the windows: gulls and people shouting outside late at night could bother some people • Windows were very dirty and only open a crack, making it difficult to check...

The hotel is expensive considering it is unmanned - we paid £755.20 (10736.53 NOK / €910.24!!!!!) for two people for 3 nights. If you are not good with technology or require special assistance please do not stay here. There is no view of outside. Our window and curtains back onto the lobby area and if we keep the curtains open everyone can see into our room, and vice versa. The air in our room is therefore recycled and not fresh. It is also extremely noisy - I am a deep sleeper usually and got woken on many occasion so if you are a light sleeper definitely reconsider your stay. Their advertisement on booking.com states that the property is soundproof so they have actually fraudulently misrepresented and falsely advertised the property! This misrepresentation was NOT done in good faith that there is already reviews on Google that refer to the property not being sound proof so they could have adjusted their advertisement. It is clear that they have intended to falsely mislead their customers. There is only shower gel, no shampoo or conditioner. They do not clean the room, make the bed, or give you fresh towels. We only stayed for 3 nights so granted this was not too much of an issue. There is also no coffee provided except for filtered coffee beans to which we were not in receipt of filter paper or instructions on how to use the machine, so this was useless to us. The accommodation is completely unmanned and you must check in via their machines which are situated in the lobby (closed in the evenings until 10am the following day). One key card they gave us did not work for our room door and my friend was unwell the night that I went on a northern light tour. I got back at approximately 3am and was stuck outside our room. Luckily she woke up otherwise I would have had to sleep outside! When we did see hotel staff (once during our 3 night stay) they were thoroughly unhelpful. However, the largest and most inconvenient situation that occurred was on our last night. An alarm started ringing whilst we were sleeping in our room at approximately 12:15am on 07.12.2024. As the alarm was only in our room, we thought this alarm was for carbon monoxide poisoning and given that there is no ventilation we had to sit outside the room which will be evidenced by the CCTV cameras directly above where we had to sit. I suffer from stress and anxiety so I was extremely worried and had heart palpitations and nearly had a panic attack. There is also no one available until 10AM in reception, so we had to call security at 12:30AM. Security arrived at 1am. They then took until 1:45AM to fix the issue (which was due to a drain leak) - 3 people attended to fix this issue. To do this they cut the power to the water. Given how hot the rooms get at night, we were lucky that we had brought bottled water. We were also lucky we showered before bed as maybe the showers wouldn’t work although I did not test this. Please note- this was resolved at 1:45am and we had to leave the hotel by 5am due to a flight! We then could not check out due to the hotel lobby being shut until 10am which had the check out machines which again added to our stress and anxiety. Again, this is an example of misrepresentation as the booking states you can check out “until 11am” yet realistically this is then only a one hour check out period! I could not sleep until 3am due to this fiasco and nearly missed my alarm which would have led to me missing the flight. All in all, it is not worth your mental health to stay at this accommodation and it is just a massive inconvenience except for the location despite paying a significant sum! Avoid...

While I admit that the location of the hotel was great, my trip to Norway was marred by a lack of hot water available in the hotel as well as a broken sofabed. The spring was literally broken and this resulted in a huge dip in the centre of the mattress. This made my stay extremely uncomfortable and I could not get good quality rest for the 4 nights we stayed there. When I raised this issue with the hotel in an email, their attempt to sort the issue was nothing short of pathetic. I mean seriously, who adds a towel under the mattress to ‘fix’ this issue. Honestly felt as if we were not valued. After returning back to London, I frequently contacted Vander seeking compensation. They would direct me to booking.com as we booked through them. The issue here was that booking.com required confirmation from Vander that an issue did exist. Vander, being a very professional company, took their sweet time and gave a response to booking.com roughly a month after I had initially logged the complaint. During this month, I mustve contacted Vander over 15 times with the hope that they will get back to booking.com and help resolve the issue. At first they offered us a mere 10% discount on our next stay with them - which is not worth the other expenses we will incur just to ‘save’ that 10%. The general manager, Agnete, was absurdly rude over the phone. The tone and manner in which she conducted herself was appalling. She then had the audacity to say we were harassing them and bombarding them with emails and calls, when it is in fact their lack of professionalism and their failure to promptly reply to booking.com that ignited this issue. Frankly, I believe their staff need to take up a course in professional courtesy and customer service.

After constant back and forth they finally agreed to a refund of 800NOK for the bed. Apparently adding a sofabed to your booking for 4 nights costs ONLY 800NOK. This is an amazing deal in my opinion. So please if you are trying to add an extra sofabed to your stay for guests then pay no more than 800NOK for 4 nights. What an amazing deal by them seriously. 200NOK/night for a sofabed is great value. I have also attached an image of the general manager Agnete saying that the sofabed costed only 800NOK for 4nights ( again i must say...