Norway is an expensive country but used to be known for its relatively low rates for electricity and hotel rooms. That’s no longer the case. Hotel room prices have soared this year, up as much as 34 percent in the past five years.
A post-pandemic boom in tourism has also been fueled in Norway by its weak currency, the krone, that’s attracting thousands more Europeans and Americans to the country. They’re also used to traditionally higher hotel rates at home, and are less likely to balk when hotels in Oslo, Bergen and especially Tromsø charge as much as NOK 3,000 a night or even more.
Rates this year have risen more than the inflation rate (by at least 5.2 percent when inflation was at 3.9 percent). Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported already last spring that room rates in Norway were rising much higher than in Sweden and Denmark, along with hotel standards.
“And we mustn’t forget that hotel rate growth was minimal in Norway for many years prior to the pandemic,” Peter Wiederstrøm of Wiederstrøm Hotel Consulting told DN. “In the first quarter of 2019, hotel room rates in Sweden were higher than in Norway, when measured in local currency. But in this year’s first quarter, Norwegian room rates are considerably higher than the Swedish.”
NewsinEnglish.no staff
