There are two kinds of seat reservations for the Öresund trains. Danish covid-19 seat reservations for travel in Denmark and Swedish seat reservations for travel in Sweden and internationally.

The Swedish seat reservations are real seat reservations, meaning that there is a seat number printed on the ticket. They can be booked for many trips in Sweden, but it has sometimes been impossible to reserve seats for certain short distances like Alvesta-Växjö or Lund-Malmö. You can get a Swedish seat reservation for international tickets, but maybe only if you travel to or from a station north of Lund. You get a Swedish ticket by booking your ticket at oresundstag.se, sj.se or a similar website. You can't get the reservations from a vending machine (except maybe SJ's vending machines). If you book a ticket on sj.se and the ticket includes a train with mandatory seat reservation, then SJ forces you to also book a seat reservation for any other train where reservations are optional. Say Stockholm C-Alvesta (reservation mandatory on X 2000) connection to Öresundståg Alvesta-Kalmar C (reservation optional): if booked on sj.se, you would be forced to reserve a seat on the Öresundståg too. I think that this is a bug in SJ's booking tool. Seat reservations are only offered for certain seats. Many seats can't be reserved.

The Danish seat reservations are fake seat reservations meant to reduce the number of passengers on the trains due to covid-19, and it's mandatory to get a reservation. Although it's called a seat reservation, there is actually no seat reserved for you. Book on dsb.dk. If you already have a ticket which you bought somewhere else, specify that you are 0 people travelling and that you want one seat reservation. I don't know if the Danish system can see Swedish seat reservations, so maybe you need to get a Danish seat reservation for the portion in Denmark even if you already have a Swedish seat reservation for the whole trip.

The seat reservations are in the Swedish booking system, but I suspect that the signs on the trains are connected to the Danish booking system and that they therefore can't see if a seat has been reserved or not, so the signs are useless.

In Denmark, Germany and other countries, the signs work as intended: they reveal if the seat has been reserved or not. If the seat on a Danish domestic train has been reserved, then it will say where it's reserved (for example København H-Aalborg if it's reserved between those stations) or "Kan være reserveret" if no one has reserved the seat. If it says that the seat has been reserved from, say, Roskilde to Vejle, then the text changes to "Kan være reserveret" once the train has reached Vejle.

The Öresundståg signs always report "can be reserved" (kan reserveras/kan være reserveret) regardless of whether the seat is reserved or not, so the signs are useless. I've seen this happen on Danish domestic trains too when the system presumably wasn't working for some reason, but this is uncommon - it usually works on Danish domestic trains.

If the “can be reserved” thing on Oresundstag were to ever be programmed based on seats reserved, it seems to have rarely been updated per specific train load in my experience of using them the past two decades.

I’m curious to see when SJ resumes service from Denmark to Sweden.

In December 2020, SJ took over the operations of the Öresundståg on the Swedish side of the border, but maybe you meant X 2000.

I was indeed referring to the non-Oresundstag trains which used to have SJ passenger trains on SJ-branded trains going across the bridge.

Sweden’s change of Oresundstag operator being an attempt at cost-cutting due to the pandemic? They had new uniforms from mid-December.

No, SJ simply won the procurement after the previous contract with Transdev expired.

A contract expiring on the 12th/13th of December? When did that become the original expiration date on the contract with Transdev? It seems like they’ve had a history of having mid-December operator swaps even before Veolia got it. Not what I would consider an ideal time for changes, but it seems to be their thing. Reminds me of the clown show with the most recent Skanetrafiken ticket system change having been done at a bad time of the year for serious operational changes.

Changing operators is not necessarily without its own costs even when a contract is approaching its early possible expiration (with or without penalty), so why would it be at that time that Transdev would be the wrong-cost operator while SJ would be the right-cost operator?

It seems that Osterport will eventually be the end stop for SJ-operated Oresundstag. Does that mean no more Swedish trains up to Helsingor?

No wonder they have been trying to sort of distance from the Oresundstag branding in parts.

European timetable changes on the second Sunday of December every year, which is why many railway-related changes occur on that day. So this wouldn't be unusual. While I'm not aware of details of this specific contract, news articles in professional media don't suggest anything unusual happened.

Similarly, Vy took over Norrland night trains (previously operated by SJ) on 13th December 2020.

That's not how it works. As these trains are publicly funded, there must always be a public procurement and whoever wins, gets the contract. You can't just decide to keep the existing operator forever (although there may be an option to extend the contract for a set period of time, e.g. 8 years contract with possible 4 years extension - there is some upper limit set in the European legislation, but I'm not sure what exactly it is). There are some exceptions to this, notably if an authority has a majority stake in an operating company it is in some circumstances possible to keep that operator without a public procurement (e.g. city-owned public transport companies which are very common in central Europe, such as Wiener Linien in Vienna or DPP in Prague).

As an example, MTR's contract to operate Stockholm metro will expire in November 2023 so there will be a public procurement starting in September this year for the new contractor who will take over on 2nd November 2023. It may or may not be MTR again. (This also has a political twist to it, as some consider it undesirable to have a company under Chinese influence operate such a strategic infrastructure, but that's irrelevant for this debate.)

I’m quite familiar with public procurement, just don’t follow the trains this much to pay attention to all the details like this. :)

Didn’t Transdev/Veolia make a run to retain the Swedish contract to operate Oresundstag? Or did SJ somehow undercut on price despite — or maybe because of — Veolia’s incumbency operation/knowledge advantages?

During this pandemic, cutbacks on public transit service has been hitting Sweden in various ways; and that also includes periodical cuts to service, with the salt on the open wounds being little to no holding back on ticket price hikes for at least some aspects of public transit service. Public transit around the world has taken a beating during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a list of operators who bid for the contract. But it seems SJ was already interested and placed a bid few years ago when the previous contract was offered. Perhaps they improved their offer. The way I understand it, price wasn't the only criterium.
I completely agree with the last sentence, unfortunately. But can you provide some examples of service cuts in Sweden? My perception was quite the opposite, I got a feeling that they took a dogma of not reducing service to allow physical distancing a step too far. Obviously, I'm happy they kept high level service level in locations I travel in, but as an example, it was a bit absurd to use night metro in Stockholm during the peak of the second wave when I'd sometimes find myself being the only person on board. Bus would be absolutely sufficient at those times, at much lower cost. I wonder which regions took a different approach.

Confirmed I was able to enter yesterday by just presenting my passport and CDC card. Was sort of anticlimactic, they only looked at each for a few seconds before a stamp and "Welcome to Denmark!"

So what happens if you have a ticket but no seat reservation?

There is a similar policy for certain train operators in England, but it is a complete shambles in at least 5 different ways which would be off-topic for this thread.

Skanetrafiken in southern Sweden and SL in Stockholm had cut back service during parts of the pandemic.

SL’s service cuts, for example, are referred to here: https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/7518983

The pandemic period hit on public transit finances in Sweden was hard: https://www.transdev.com/en/news-en/...travel-sweden/

Denmark too hasn’t been spared such hits.

Checked in at a Copenhagen hotel yesterday. Do I show my coronapas now or at breakfast, I asked. You would do it at breakfast, the staff replied.

At the breakfast the next morning, there was no trace of anyone ckecking your coronapas.

Three middle-aged women checked in this evening. Do I show my coronapas now or at breakfast, one of them asked. You would do it at breakfast, the staff replied.

I sense it’s a custom among hotels across the country.

Added:
It turns out that the hotel I”m staying at these days isn’t entirely void of checking your coronapas. You sign up for breakfast the day before with the schedule distributed in quarter hour intervals. So say you signed up for 8:15 and you show up at 8:17, the staff person happily looks at your coronapas. But due to a shortage of staff, the same person is cleaning tables 8:20-8:30, and why not, because of course people are punctual!

The surprising reason that many hotel and restaurant workers aren’t returning as Denmark is reopening is that the corona test centers offer higher salaries, which the hotels and restaurants can’t match.

https://www.berlingske.dk/samfund/ho...-er-et-problem

Interesting that the testing centers are competitors for the same labor pool as the hospitality and F&B industries. Wasn’t it sort of the same thing in parts of the US?

While a check of test results and/or vaccination for eating indoors may have been technically required, I was under the impression that it’s not been required to stay in hotels in Copenhagen this month.