Theodor Axelsson Lindgren has worked at Ellery Beach House since it opened six years ago. Before that, he worked in fine dining in Stockholm. Sina Ahadi is the system expert at ESS Group’s head office and started the same year. Together they showed how Ellery turned guest data into hospitality, and what they would do differently.
Ellery sits 18 minutes outside Stockholm, surrounded by nature. It has 122 rooms and was ESS Group’s first hotel in the Stockholm area. It is a destination hotel: a stay includes the room, dinner, breakfast and the beach club. About 60% of guests come for conferences and 40% for leisure, and the team treats them the same. Their word for it is bleisure.
Two habits shaped the place from the start. No task is more important than talking to a guest. And every morning, two managers greet each conference group in person.
From information to action
Returning guests have always mattered at ESS Group. One guest has stayed at Ellery more than 60 times. For years the team had no good tool for that knowledge. Now they do.
The method is simple. Information becomes an action, and the right department completes it. Staff also log each guest’s mood during the stay.
Every week the team reads upcoming bookings against guest profiles. Favorite rooms and tables are set before arrival. Shortly after check-in, guests get a welcome text inviting small requests. If the bathrobe is the wrong size, it is swapped before the guest has to walk back to reception. Morning and evening meetings run from a day summary: arrivals, VIPs, birthdays, and anything negative from a guest’s last review.
Mood is the early warning. Staff mark a guest as happy, so so, or not happy. A red mood becomes an action any department can pick up. Theodor told of a guest who was served a cold Irish coffee one evening. The next morning, breakfast staff saw the mood, apologized and brought him a coffee on the house. Most hotels learn about problems at checkout. This catches them during the stay.
At checkout, the team reviews what happened and notes what to remember. The goal, Theodor said, is to never say welcome. Only welcome back.
One profile, one system
Sina’s brief was to make hospitality easier for staff. ESS Group has 14 destinations, and a guest known at one should be known at the next. So they built one guest profile across all of them. Conference guests now get their own profiles too, not just the company name, as long as there is a phone number or email.
Everything had to live inside VisBook, the property management system staff already use. Nobody should have to switch systems mid-conversation. Colors make status obvious at a glance: green for welcome back, gold for a VIP. “We talk a lot about AI,” Sina said, “but it’s the people who deliver it.”
Too much at first
ESS Group rolled the tools out to most of its hotels in eight months. The biggest lesson came early. The first version had around 20 actions, and nobody had time to read them. The team cut back to two, welcome back and mood, and let the rest grow from there.
Training mattered just as much. At first, staff clicked green for everyone, which told nobody anything. So managers and head waiters logged moods first. Theodor’s most effective tool was live coaching: working whole shifts alongside staff, on the floor.
The results
Within six months, completed actions rose from 15% to 92%. Mood was logged for 40% of guests during their stay, up from 3%, and 97% of them were happy. Bookings are up 8% on last year, a trend the team links to the new way of working.
Nothing replaces the energy of real hospitality, Theodor said. The system helps deliver it at the same level, every time.
Where to begin
Choose the two signals you trust most, such as returning guests and in-stay mood. Put them on the screen at your morning meeting for a month.