The Nordic hotel market is growing. But look closely at the biggest moves and most of them trace back to a single event. A strong year can hide a gap in next year’s calendar.
Growth, with a qualifier
Benchmarking Alliance brought the only hard market data of the Summit. From January to August 2026, RevPAR grew 8.1% in Sweden, with 32 of 37 markets growing. Denmark grew 8.4% and Norway 2.2%. Stockholm was up around 10%, helped by congresses and summer concerts. Copenhagen grew RevPAR by 8.4% while adding 3.4% more rooms.
The qualifier came with almost every number. When a market jumped or fell sharply, there was usually one event behind it. Gävle fell because last year’s ice hockey final had nothing to replace it. Trondheim fell after hosting the world ski championships. Where it was not an event, it was new supply: Södertälje added a quarter more rooms in a year.
The forward book is splitting
Looking ahead, bookings on hand for the coming twelve months, compared with the same point last year, split the Nordic capitals. Copenhagen and Helsinki are up strongly. Stockholm and Oslo are down.
Use your channels to build more than one season
VISIT’s distribution team took the same idea to the other side of the business. Max Rosén’s point was that if you have many sales channels but still only one high season, you do not really have many channels. You have one channel with different names. In the best case, OTAs fill the shoulder seasons, travel agencies bring longer stays, and direct sales smooth out the peaks.
The value of a channel is not the same as its volume. In VISIT’s Icelandic data, the travel agency channel brings about one booking in nine, but around a third of the revenue. Deal sites, private booking sites for local companies or unions, and packages with nearby attractions are all ways to fill the weeks when no event is coming to town.
What to do
- Know which events drive your best weeks, and what will replace them next year.
- Watch new hotel supply in your market as closely as demand.
- Rank your channels by what each booking earns after costs, not by volume.
- Give every channel a job, and point at least one of them at your quietest period.
Heard in: The Hotel Market Right Now (Henrik Karlsson, Benchmarking Alliance) · VISIT Distribution (Max Rosén, Jonas Rofors and Haukur Birgisson, VISIT)