Hotel tycoon Petter Stordalen plans to remodel and expand his Clarion Hotel Royal Christiania in downtown Oslo, to turn it into Norway’s largest hotel. Fully 190 people now working at the hotel are losing their jobs in the process.
“It’s unfortunate that so many will lose their jobs,” Stordalen told newspaper VG this week, “but it’s not possible to put them on furlough for more than two years.”
That’s how long the rebuilding process will take at the hotel that originally was built to accommodate guests when the Winter Olympics was held in Oslo in 1952. It most recently was expanded and remodeled in the early 1990s.
Stordalen said his company will set up a recruiting and consulting office in cooperation with state welfare agency NAV to help the hotel’s workers find new jobs. Tore Gjøs, who represents employees at the hotel, said they had hoped they’d be offered jobs at some of Stordalen’s other hotels but that hasn’t happened.
newsinenglish.no staff
