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We chose this stay for one reason. Location.

We were in Utrecht to watch our daughter’s hockey team from London play at Kampong, one of the larger clubs here.

The plan was tight: arrive in the afternoon, catch the evening game, stay one night, then watch two more the next morning before heading back to Amsterdam.

This wasn’t a destination hotel. It was there to make the schedule work.

The hotel sits directly next to Utrecht Centraal, built into the Hoog Catharijne complex.

From the outside, it’s part of a curved tower above the mall (shared with a Hampton by Hilton). From the inside, you’re entering through the mall.

It’s extremely easy to reach from the train, but you don’t get a sense of arrival. You move from retail space to hotel lift to reception in a couple of minutes.

For this trip, that was perfectly fine.

The room is modern, clean, and laid out in a way that makes sense.

The curved exterior shows up inside, giving you a long run of windows rather than a flat wall. It’s the one feature that separates it from a standard business hotel room.

There’s a seating area by the window, a proper desk, and enough space to move around without thinking about it.

Nothing stands out, but nothing feels missing.

There’s also a Nespresso machine. Useful for an early start, though worth noting that two of the capsule colours (regular and decaf) are very similar. Easy mistake to make with dimmed lighting when half awake.

The room looks out over a canal running alongside the main road.

In daylight, it’s a straightforward city view. Early morning and evening are better, when the street lighting and reflections give it a bit more shape.

Not something you’d book for, but it adds context to where you are.

We used a Chase Free Night Certificate, so breakfast wasn’t included.

We didn’t miss it.

The hotel sits inside a large mall with plenty of food options just outside the entrance. For a short stay, that flexibility is more useful than a hotel breakfast.

At check-in, Platinum status gave the usual choice:

We took the drinks.

That translated into a large Heineken and a glass of red wine — roughly €14 of value. The points alternative rarely makes sense on that trade.

The bar sits within a larger shared space that blends into a restaurant and co-working area. To get there, you walk through a long stretch of tables and booths.

Around 7pm, it was being used in a mix of ways:

It’s one of those spaces that quietly covers both.

A couple of practical points from the stay.

Fire alarm

A building-wide alarm went off shortly after we checked in, requiring everyone to take the stairs down from the 7th floor. It turned out to be a false alarm.

Not a major issue, but in a building connected to a mall, these things feel bigger than they are.

Transport

Getting an Uber required selecting a nearby pickup point rather than dropping a pin exactly where we were. That meant a short extra walk.

Again, more about the building setup than the hotel itself.

Standard checkout is 12:00.

We asked for late checkout and were given 14:00 without any pushback. That’s consistent with how IHG Platinum tends to be handled in this type of property.

This is a hotel that works when:

It’s not somewhere you’d build a trip around.

The Crowne Plaza Utrecht puts you next to the station, gives you a clean and usable room, and keeps everything simple.

For a one-night stop built around a fixed schedule, that’s exactly what you want.