My review of the Hilton Helsinki Airport hotel – is it worth it?

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This is my review of the Hilton Helsinki Airport hotel.

With my Finnair flight arriving into Helsinki well past midnight, and the train service into Helsinki closed for the evening, it made sense to stay at the airport.

There are now two hotels connected to the airport. I thought there was only the Hilton Helsinki Airport, but a relatively new arrival is the GLO hotel. This is a design-centric property and the chain is a member of Global Hotel Alliance if you have GHA status (top-tier status comes free with a subscription to Business Traveller).

As I had some Hilton HHonors points to use, I booked into the Hilton Helsinki Airport hotel. The good news is that it was just an eight minute walk from the door of the A350 to the door of the hotel. The bad news is that you need to leave the airport to get to the hotel. Whilst the walkway is covered, Helsinki after midnight in November is a chilly place to be outside.

I won’t critique the hotel too highly because I was hardly there. I spent less than two hours awake in the hotel.

I had been upgraded to the executive floor via my Hilton Gold status but this was a moot point – by the time I woke up the next day, breakfast had finished and the lounge was unmanned. I believe that Hilton Diamond members are often upgraded to rooms with their own private saunas!

The room was not huge but had been refurbished recently in a typical Scandinavian style using plenty of wood. The circular mini-bar built into the desk was particularly novel.

The lobby, bar and dining areas are more impressive – spacious and expensively redesigned:

and

All in all, I had a perfectly satisfactory stay at the Hilton Helsinki Airport and would be happy to stay there again. Do take a look at the GLO hotel as well if you are paying cash, however, as it does seem to be substantially more interesting than your usual airport property.

You can find out more about the hotel, and book, on its special section of the Hilton website here.

How to earn Hilton Honors points and status from UK credit cards (December 2021)

There are various ways of earning Hilton Honors points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

Do you know that holders of The Platinum Card from American Express receive FREE Hilton Honors Gold status for as long as they hold the card? It also comes with Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Radisson Rewards Gold and MeliaRewards Gold status. We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here and you can apply here.

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Did you know that the Virgin Atlantic credit cards are a great way of earning Hilton Honors points? Two Virgin Points can be converted into three Hilton Honors points. The Virgin Atlantic cards are the only Visa or Mastercard products in the UK which can indirectly earn Hilton Honors points. You can apply here.

You can also earn Hilton Honors points indirectly with American Express Gold (20,000 bonus points), the American Express Rewards Credit Card (5,000 bonus points) and – for small business owners – American Express Business Gold (20,000 bonus points) and Business Platinum (40,000 bonus points).

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which can be used to earn Hilton Honors points.

(Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)

Category

Hilton Honors

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Guesswho2000 says:

4 Dec4 December 04:36

I’ve stayed here twice and was upgraded to the exec floor both times as a HH Gold. Nice hotel, and the lobby bar was pretty entertaining, but the exec lounge I found to be dead the whole time.

First stay I arrived late but ate breakfast downstairs, second time i was there early enough in the evening but nothing seemed to be going on – I assume it’s down to it being an airport hotel. I ate breakfast at the AY lounge the next morning, so no idea if anything was served then! It’s perfectly good if you want to grab a cold drink, coffee or biscuit, though.
Susan says:

4 Dec4 December 05:34

Nit-picky but GHA via Business Traveller is mid-tier (Platinum) rather than top which is Black. Still tends to give nice benefits – we were given a suite despite a standard room booking at the last Corinthia (not London!)
Adam says:

4 Dec4 December 07:40

How many points did you use, what was the cash rate, and did you meet your own valuation?
- Rob says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 07:53
  
  I knew someone would ask that 🙂
  
  It is 30,000 points per night.
  
  With the usual HFP level of professionalism when it comes to reviews, I forgot to take a note of the cash price. However, it was higher than average and did definitely meet my threshold of 0.3p per point.
  
  In truth, I would probably still have used the points even if the value had been lower than this (let’s say Euro 125) because I had them and did not see much of an alternative use at present.
  
  Typed from 2F in Qatar Airways A380 First Class! Lots of cool photos of the lounge on http://www.instagram.com/headforpoints
  - Stu R says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 08:06
    
    Rob, have you ever considered opening up your own forums here so folks could ‘join’ and post their own photo’s, topics etc? Or would that be too much to police etc?
    - Rob says:
      
      4 Dec4 December 08:15
      
      We discuss it every Christmas and we tend to side with ‘no’. Reasons being:
      
      – moderation, which I could not handle given the time required (you can now pay people in India to moderate forums for you though, I know sites that do this)
      – may lower the tone of the site if quality of discussion was lower than happens now (which is astonishingly high)
      – impact of weakening discussions on this part of the site, especially as news would end up on the forum first as the relevant HFP article would not run until the next day
      – it wouldn’t generate much ad revenue as people scroll past the ads on forums to get to the latest posts
      
      Upsides:
      – lots more page views, which would be profitable if I directly sold ad space (which I don’t) and so was not reliant on pay per click
      – increased reader engagement
      
      There is ‘stuff happening’ here at HFP Towers, part of which will be seen over the weekend. Fundamentally I need to decide whether to hire someone full time to help me (which would remove some of the reasons I do this, such as master of my own schedule) or artificially limit the scale of what I do. I have just accepted a couple of loyalty consulting projects, for example, which will put an extra squeeze on my time.
      
      More hands would make projects like forums more viable. Most people don’t realise, for example, that I get 700 emails per week, most of which require some sort of response.
      - ankomonkey says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 10:42
        
        Would the salary be cash or points/miles? Any statuses thrown in as perks?
      - Andy says:
        
        4 Dec4 December 11:59
        
        Platinum HFP membership for all employees, it doesn’t come with any benefits but much like IHG Spire we’d likely all still be clamouring to get it.
Richard says:

4 Dec4 December 08:24

It also might be worth noting that Holiday Inn Helsinki airport is only a 10-15 minute shuttle ride away, and at 15000 IHG points per night, can often be another good value option.
whiskerxx says:

4 Dec4 December 09:19

I don’t understand why anyone would click on any of the adverts – ever!
- Andy says:
  
  4 Dec4 December 12:03
  
  Sometimes contextual adverts are genuinely of interest. It’s important to remember that whilst much of the content on the internet is free to read, it has to be paid for somehow since hosting isn’t free and writers often want some form of compensation. Adverts are there for a reason and generally that reason isn’t greed.
  - Rob says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 13:44
    
    I’m sure you’ve seen from other websites what HFP would look like if I was keen to maximise ad revenue!
    
    As an example, I recently turned down from the agency one of those annoying ads which fills up the blue space on each side of the screen on desktop. It was not for a travel product so totally irrelevant to you lot and very annoying to boot. They were paying 1p per impression so I was losing over GBP 100 per day.
  - whiskerxx says:
    
    4 Dec4 December 23:06
    
    yes I get why they are present, I simply can’t understand why anyone would click on them
Richmond says:

4 Dec4 December 09:47

I stayed at Hilton for cash during my A350 test trip and wasn’t upgraded to Exec, as HH Gold. I think hotel was full because prices jumped just after I booked the room and never came down. Not sure if there would be any use of lounge as I arrived after midnight and had breakfast in the main restaurant.
Oleg says:

4 Dec4 December 11:40

The other Hilton in Helsinki (Kalastajatorppa) by the beach is superb!! Stayed there last year around Christmas and it was beautiful.
RogerWilco says:

5 Dec5 December 08:57

Yes, the Kalastajatorppa is great even if a bit out of town. For a more downtown location, there’s the Hilton Helsinki (also seeside) right in Hakaniemi. But if you just need a place to sleep between two flights, the airport Hilton is to go.