- published: 09 Mar 2016
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Scandic Hotels is a hotel chain headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden with its main operations in the Nordic countries. Alongside hotels in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark, the company also has a presence in Belgium and the Netherlands, Estonia and Lithuania, Northern Germany and Poland. It is owned by EQT Partners.
The first hotel in what was later to become the Scandic chain was the Esso Motor Hotel in Närke, central Sweden. Opened in 1963, it capitalized on the increase in car travel, both for business and pleasure – the motel was a novel concept for Europe at the time. A second hotel followed in Mölndal three years later. By 1972 the company began to expand into Norway and Denmark, and a year later it was the largest hotel chain in its native Sweden.
In 1983, the company was sold to a Swedish consortium headed by Ratos and the following year it was named Scandic Hotels. Ratos became sole owner in 1985, and a year later the first hotel outside Scandinavia opened in Koblenz, Germany.
The business was negatively impacted by the 1990/91 Gulf Crisis, and company management was replaced in 1992. In 1996 the group acquired Reso Hotels and became a publicly traded company on the Stockholm stock exchange. Two years later, the Arctia Hotels group in Finland followed, giving Scandic a presence in all the Scandinavian countries, and in 1999 the group expanded into Estonia.