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Scandic Celebrates 40 Years Of Hotel History |
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JULY, 2003 -- This summer Scandic will be celebrating 40 years as a hotel chain, making it the oldest hotel chain in the Nordic Countries. What started its life as motels alongside Sweden’s main roads is now a hotel chain for everyone, not just motorists. |
Sweden’s first motel, Esso Motorby in Laxå in central Sweden, opened on 14 July 1963, marking the dawn of a new era for hotels in the Nordic Countries. Before that the Swedish hotel and restaurant industry was largely dominated by the state-owned hotel chain SARA and the Reso chain, owned by the cooperative movement.
The oil company Esso wanted to develop its service stations on the new motorways being planned in Sweden at the time. Market research convinced the company to focus on motels, with the theme “Everything for the Motorist”. In 1963 a room cost SEK 17 and the restaurant menu comprised 90 well-designed dishes. For SEK 7.50 guests were served butter, bread, a main course and 3 smaller dishes.
The hotel chain expanded abroad, to Denmark and Norway, as early as the beginning of the 1970s and within only a couple of years Esso Motor Hotel was the biggest chain in Scandinavia. In the mid-1980s Esso sold its hotel business to an independent company and the chain was renamed Scandic Hotels.
1996 saw Scandic listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, making it the first pure hotel business in Sweden to be quoted on the stock market. In 1998, thanks to major acquisitions – Swedish Reso (1996), Finnish Arctia (1998) and Swedish Provobis (2000) – Scandic became the largest hotel chain in the Nordic Countries.
Two years ago Hilton Group Plc, based in the UK and with brands such as Hilton and Conrad Hotels, bought Scandic.
In Scandic’s 40 years the hotel concept has been transformed and the sector has seen explosive growth. Design has become essential and hotels have to keep up with the latest trends, some of which were set by Scandic itself. Scandic was the first hotel chain in the Nordic Countries to introduce non-smoking rooms, TVs in every room, its own internal channel, fitness rooms in every hotel, and wireless broadband, not to mention taking the environment into consideration at an early stage. In addition, Scandic’s loyalty programme, Scandic Club, was one of the first hotel loyalty programmes to be launched in the world.
Today there are 139 Scandic hotels in 9 countries. At the start of this year Scandic decided to Swan-certify (the official Nordic ecolabel) all 65 of its hotels in Sweden. This work is estimated to be complete by the end of 2004.
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