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After crisis situations through the corona pandemic, things have turned right around for Petter Stordalen’s hotel chain Strawberry, which was previously called Nordic Choice.
Last year, the hotel group had a pre-tax profit of NOK 687 million, against a pre-tax loss of over NOK one billion in 2021. At the same time, turnover increased from NOK 8.9 billion in 2021 to NOK 14.3 billion last year.
– If you look at the situation I was in a little over a year ago, during omicron in March 2022, the underlying operation has shown a fantastic development of enormous work from our 18,000 employees. I had not seen that comeback even in the most optimistic calculations from the beginning of 2022. I was not close to talking about such numbers. They weren’t even on the radar, says Petter Stordalen Finansavisenwho reported the numbers first.
Billion deficit
Like many others in the industry, Nordic Choice struggled heavily when the world shut down as a result of the pandemic. In 2020, the deficit was almost two billion kroner before tax, and it did not improve much in 2021.
At the end of March 2020, just after Norway shut down, DN wrote about the billion-dollar debt that threatened Stordalen’s entire empire.
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– It is an absolutely, absolutely terrible situation. Everything I have worked for, for the people, the culture… We are doing everything we can to make this happen, Stordalen said at the time.
When DN gets in touch on Thursday evening to ask about Nordic Choice’s results last year, the tone is completely different.
– The reason why we managed to turn it around is simple. The strength of the comeback we’ve had lies in the culture and the people, says Stordalen on the phone.
He continues:
– We kept the people and we kept the culture and just like after previous crises we managed to come back. Those who thought that you could build culture and relationships with Zoom and Teams were wrong.
– What does 2023 look like so far?
– It looks better than last year, but we have a backdrop of uncertainty and an economy that is under pressure from various sides. We have high interest rates and high inflation, which makes people pessimistic, says Stordalen.
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Nevertheless, he says that he experiences good booking levels from the autumn onwards.
– The companies are back and have faith, even if there are exceptions.
In front of Finansavisen, he denies having taken large write-downs in the property portfolio, although he confirms a drop in value at the exclusive Sommerro hotel in Oslo.
The Norwegian agreement
The pleasant figures for the Nordic Choice hotels come just a few days after Stordalen’s Strawberry group presented a new collaboration with the airline Norwegian with a bang.
“One of the most extensive partnerships in tourism in recent times,” wrote DN.
The collaboration was presented at the Stordalen hotel Amerikalinjen in Oslo on Tuesday and will initially be about the bonus points – the building blocks of the Norwegian and Strawberry loyalty programs.
– What we create together is going to change the market for loyalty programs, said Stordalen.
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He will return to this deal to explain some of the reason for the comeback for the hotels by phone Thursday night.
– There would never have been an agreement if we had not met physically. And it wasn’t about money, but about people with a common ambition and a will to create something big.
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2023-06-29 18:18:01
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