Strawberry Bets Big on Two New Hotel Brands in Nordic Market Shake-Up

Strawberry, the Nordic region's largest private hotel operator, rebranded over 50 hotels on Monday under its new "Home" brand as it reduced its reliance on Choice Hotels International's brands.

Strawberry, which operates about 200 hotels across the Nordics, said it's also developing a sustainable roadside motel chain called Stopover, which it expects to open by September.

Both Home and Stopover are the first new brands from the Oslo-based company in three decades. They followed Strawberry's renegotiation of its franchise agreement with Choice Hotels, allowing it to develop its own brands.

"There is a huge potential for hotels offering a home-like experience," said Anna Spjuth, Senior Vice President for Brand and Concept at Strawberry, who has spent the past year and a half developing the Home brand.

On Monday, Strawberry began converting its 54 Clarion Collection properties to the Home brand, a process it said would take six weeks. The Home brand will eventually cover 56 hotels after two more are added this spring.

New Brand: Home Hotels

The Home Hotels will especially target business travelers who spend multiple nights per week on the road, Spjuth said.

Besides fresh breakfast and an afternoon snack, a dinner service is also included in the nightly rate. Free dinner is rarely a perk at any brand positioned between premium and mid-market segments like Home is.

Easing Loneliness

"Loneliness is becoming stronger and bigger as a social problem," Spjuth said, citing the company's market research.

One response, according to Strawberry's extensive market research, starts with food. Each Home hotel includes not just breakfast but also "fika" — the beloved Swedish tradition of afternoon coffee and sweets — and dinner, all wrapped into the room rate.

It's a throwback to the classic full-board hotels but reimagined for the Microsoft Teams era, where a regional sales manager might spend more nights in hotels than in their actual home. By coaxing guests to cross paths, the brand hopes to foster some connections.

The details are Scandinavian in their thoughtfulness: local radio stations are already playing when you enter your guestroom, and regional authors' books are on the shelves, providing a sense of place.

"We've added better duvets and pillows," said Spjuth.

New Brand: Stopover

Separately, Strawberry is working with real-estate investor Slättö to launch a new Stopover brand. Up to 20 locations are planned, with the first Stopover set to open in Falkenberg by September.

"We're reimagining the traditional roadside motel for the era of modern workers and families driving electric vehicles," Spjuth said.

The brand will include meeting spaces, laundry facilities, electric vehicle charging, a small gym, and a mini remote working area.

The new brand will feature mostly modular, or pre-fab, construction. They'll mostly be constructed using Swedish wood in a factory and then assembled on-site. The method will reduce construction costs (especially in bad weather) and reduce total carbon emissions as part of the process.

Each property will have a sustainability theme, with solar panels and some geothermal energy to help with power generation. Each will also have fast-charging stations for guests' vehicles, which will be made possible through partnerships with Tesla and Ionity.

Another key perk will be a dog run, or place for pet dogs to play.

"Everyone got a dog during the pandemic," Spjuth said.

Why Now?

Recent technology investments have enabled Strawberry's brand expansion, having moved to a cloud-based property management system from Mews that enabled a faster brand transition.

"Without the tech stack investments we've made in the last two years, I don't think we would be in the place where we could rebrand so many hotels at a time," said Spjuth, who was previously the chief commercial officer at publicly held rival company Scandic Hotels.

A surge in membership in its loyalty program since a reboot in 2023 to emphasize "experiences" as rewards and not just hotel stays has also helped.

Strawberry already counts 3 million members of its loyalty program in a region of just 27 million people, and it believes it can use that program to introduce its new brands and encourage direct bookings — avoiding the high commissions that online travel agencies charge for distribution.

Strawberry designed the Home brand to especially appeal to members of its highest-tier loyalty members.

In a new perk, Strawberry will give personalized pillowcases to the most loyal members of its loyalty program — the ones staying at its hotels more than 150 nights a year.

What's Next?

Might Strawberry reduce its franchising of other Choice brands now that it has zeroed-out the Clarion Collection? Spjuth said the company is fully committed to Choice's Comfort brand. But otherwise, her response was non-committal:

"So my team, we are looking into new brands all the time, doing our homework first," Spjuth said. "We see what happens with the rest of the brands. We don't know yet."

Strawberry's strategy with its two newest brands will depend on whether including dining and sustainability features can command premium rates while maintaining profitability. The private company hasn't disclosed specific investment figures for the brand launches or renovation costs. It operates a majority of the Home hotels as management contracts rather than as franchises.

For now, the company wants to execute its plan and get early reactions from guests to finetune the product. That's a weighty project for a relatively small company.

"There's a historical significance of the rebranding to Home," Spjuth said. "We've never rebranded so many hotels at one time like we are doing, and we don't know of any competitor to have ever done a similar thing."