CPH-Flyer

I see three points as to why Ritz, St Regis, Waldorf, Park Hyatt, MO, The Pen, FS, etc. are not in the Scandinavian region. The home market is too small, too few Scandinavians are willing to pay for these hotels. The service mentality in Scandinavia is just not what it needs to be for these kinds of hotels, and they would struggle to recruit. The salary levels means it is way too expensive to staff these hotels the way they need to be staffed to make it work.

nacho

I think these hotels would need to import foreign workers to increase the service level in Scandinavia. We are too used to BYO culture, a lot of summer houses here require us to bring bed linen and clean before departure, which is the other extreme compared to StR or Ritz etc.

GUWonder

I so dislike that BYO thing. At Swedish ski resorts, if you don't do the BYO thing, it can cost you not just in money but also in time as they often require an earlier check-out than if doing the BYO/do-it-yourself cleaning thing.

Of those hotels which I use in continental Scandinavian countries, they have most of the housekeepers speaking in foreign languages or with foreign/non-Scandinavian accents if they even speak the local language. It also seems like in Copenhagen at least that the majority of the hotel check-in desk agents whom I encounter on my stays don't have the local Scandinavian language as their first language. Sweden seems to have its hotel front-desks being more local "Scandinavian" than is the case in Denmark and Norway for me, but it's also not like it used to be. That said, Scandinavian hotels have improved the quality of the rooms over what it used to be a decade or two ago, and service is no worse than it used to be. If anything, hotel staff at major chain hotels have seemed to become more welcoming on average than they used to be across the region.

I do know that hotels in the region have been increasingly interested in hiring people who can't speak the local language as the labor situation in the countries got tighter, and it hasn't come with any decline in service quality for me.

It appears the housing wealth hit has been less profound in Denmark than in Norway and Sweden -- I take it to mean that I should be getting better long-haul fare deals out of Swedish airports than out of CPH even if SAS tries to keep up its fares.

nacho

I hate the BYO thing too so when we found out about Residence Inn we were so thrilled that someone actually clean the apartment.

The Moxy CPH, no front desk speaks fluent Danish and if you look at TA some Danes complained that they can't speak their native language in their home country

jamesbrownontheroad

Of peripheral interest to EuroBonus members: Widerře will lose it's Covid-era LHR slots from NS23. BGO-LHR will end later this year. A twice-weekly route to STN will replace it.

First reported here: https://www.airliners.net/forum/view...?f=3&t=1480961

FlyingMoose

Right, which is a problem not just these hotels face but also many other industries and which is an issue that Scandinavia needs to address sooner than later as it affects normal families to. Couples that both work 60-80 hours a week do not have time for basic household tasks and need to be able to outsource those at amounts relative to their discretionary income. But we can't have nice hotels because house keeping staff needs to earn the same as financial services employees in comparable countries over outdated laws is nuts and is highly incompatible with a modern globalized world that isn't a Scandinavian island anymore.

Alternatively they need to find solutions or lobby with the government that allows them to insert cheap foreign staff which they need to meet the service levels regardless. Otoh if Germans can give me acceptable service in Germany, I'm sure Swedes can be turned around to. So it comes down to the usual wage issue for basic labor that is plaguing this region.

I'm perfectly fine with foreign staff in hotels in Sweden that do not speak Swedish provided they speak English.

GUWonder

I got the sense that most housekeepers at major brand hotels in Sweden are getting paid much less money than the bank workers at the nearby SEB/Nordea/Handelsbanken/DanskeBank offices. They certainly don’t seem to live at the same lifestyle strata as financial service employees in the same country. And the divergent pay really will show even more whenever they get up to whatever increased retirement age ends up being the order of the day.

Sweden has no statutory minimum wage applicable for workers whom DINK and other couples want for outsourcing household tasks. This can mean the teenagers picking potatoes may get paid 150 SEK/hour during the summer while the middle age Polish housekeeper at a Swedish city center hotel may be getting 100 SEK/hour if working at the hotel but maybe get double that if working in an irregular cash for pay set-up for DINKs and other couples allegedly working 60-80 hours each per week.

nacho

When we hired a firm to do the moving cleaning, the guy who owns the business is from Montenegro and he has a team of 12 people working on our house at the same time. These people don't speak Swedish/English (not sure if they are here legally (as they are non-EU). There are plenty of immigrants from all over the world wanting a job so they can press down wages for jobs like this - no experience/Swedish required.

Teachers are really underpaid in Sweden, they don't earn much more than a cashier in an ICA.

jamesbrownontheroad

So, let me get this right: in order for "hard-working" people to be able to afford childcare and domestic help, we need to suppress the wages and welfare provided to equally hard-working people in service industries? Are service employees working not entitled to an income that allows them to live here and raise a family too?

FlyingMoose

As GUWonder called out, normally there is a minimum wage regulating these things and the minimum wage is in return a livable wage. The cost of affordable housing and everyday expenses is in line with that minimum wage and isn't artificially inflated with massive value added taxes in addition to the massive income taxes. The problem lies ultimately in the compressed disposable income budgets of upper middle class families in Sweden though the artificially inflated wages for what is minimum wage work in virtually every other country on the planet makes sourcing these services virtually impossible for house holds.

GUWonder

Are we talking about Sweden, the country where even people worth $100 million-$2 billion dollars are often air-drying their family laundry in the middle of their houses and the idea of having even a part-time housekeeper or cleaner when they are home is either seen by them as awkward or "personal space"-invading?

The "upper middle class" types with compressed disposable income budgets -- due to taxes and wage structures -- are often stretched to the limits with debts too and can't really afford more than an occasional cleaning service to come by like once a week. A buddy of mine in Stockholm set up a company to take care of garden type stuff for homes, and it did eventually work out -- so there is a market for it. Just a very limited market for a variety of cultural reasons.

nacho

Yeah in the rich part of Stockholm there's certainly a market for services like gardening services, but if you look around (in your local FB group) you do see people asking for referral for weekly cleaning services - even in the little low income town where I used to live.

As you know they get RUT deduction so for them the services wouldn't be that expensive.

FlyingMoose

Even after RUT cleaning and gardening services in Sweden / Stockholm are still more expensive than in comparable Western European countries.

FlyingMoose

Would love a referral / contact. The limitation of the market is only because of financial reasons in my experience.

vanillabean

We are staying at the ARN Radisson for two trips this year for the proximity to the airport. Should we cancel?

I didn't consider such an option when filing my US taxes a few days ago if that's even a thing here.