Scandic Hotels Group AB, which has approximately 280 hotels and 58,000 rooms under operation in six countries, saw overall growth in 2025 and a bump in room count thanks to a recent acquisition.
This is the first period of earnings results reported by the company since it assumed operations of the entire portfolio of Irish hotel firm Dalata Hotel Group in November.
Scandic's owners, Pandox AB and Eiendomsspar AS, acquired Dalata last July for €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion).
Full integration of Dalata's hotel operations into Scandic will take place over the coming months, and it will result in "the separation of hotel operations and real estate progressing according to plan, with no changes to the communicated timeline,” said Scandic President and CEO Jens Mathiesen.
In notes accompanying an earnings call with analysts, Mathiesen added Scandic has earned fees on Dalata hotels since Nov. 7. The operations agreement with Pandox and Eiendomsspar will remain in place until the end of a “carve-out period, during which structured work is being conducted to ensure continued operational excellence and to prepare for the integration of the operations, which is scheduled to take place in the second half of 2026.”
Mathiesen told analysts that operations of the Dalata hotel portfolio via management agreements have developed in accordance with expectations, driven by a solid performance of hotels in Ireland and the United Kingdom, Dalata’s principal markets.
Hotel occupancy and revenue per available room for the Stockholm-based firm’s portfolio both increased across the 12 months of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. Occupancy increased 3.7% to 64.1% and revenue per available room increased 2.1% to 816 Swedish krona ($90.90), according to Scandic's fourth-quarter earnings release.
Pär Christiansen, Scandic’s chief financial officer, added the company’s free cash flow is 914 million Swedish krona ($102 million) and its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was 2.4 billion Swedish krona.
Finnish fortitude
Scandic’s core hotel market is Scandinavia, and it also has a large presence in Germany.
Mathiesen said market conditions in Sweden and Norway have improved, while Denmark saw increased tourism and a favorable events calendar.
Finland, however, suffers from a weakened economy and its relative closeness to Russia and the war in Ukraine, Mathiesen said. Finland is the only Scandic market not showing growth over the last 12 months.
“The overall hotel market shows strength. … [with] revenues and profitability improving in all segments, except Finland,” he said.
Organic growth in Sweden and Norway, Scandic's two largest markets, increased by 8%, but overall profitability softened slightly.
In June 2017, Scandic acquired the 43 hotels, 7,600 rooms and operations of Finnish group Restel for €114.5 million on a cash and debt-free basis. All the hotels were in Finland, and Mathiesen said on the 2025 full-year earnings call that the business had been “very profitable during the years.”
He added it was true that Scandic held several “higher fixed leases in the Finnish market, but when we look at how we operate and drive the business … we are confident. It is not that we have bad contracts … we already have left a few in the last six years.”
Recently, there's been a slight hotel occupancy improvement in Finland among Scandic's properties and that it is natural that occupancy improves before average daily rate follows, Mathiesen said. Scandic's operations and management teams in Finland have put efficiencies into place which should translate into growth there in 2026, he added.
Scandic’s overall hotel room count increased by approximately 25% in the last year to approximately 70,000, boosted by the Dalata deal, which added about 1,400 rooms.
Scandic's development pipeline includes 4,246 rooms across 20 hotels. The company exited 641 rooms in 2025.
Upcoming hotels in U.K. include the Clayton Hotel St. Andrew Square in Edinburgh, to open in April; the Clayton Hotel Morrison Street, also in Edinburgh and to open in the third quarter of 2028; and the Clayton Hotel Old Broad Street in London, to open in the last quarter of 2028. Dalata founded the Clayton brand.
Three additional hotels in Scandic's development pipeline will also be from Dalata brands.
Christiansen said the Scandic numbers gave the firm confidence, and it has proposed a dividend to shareholders of 2.60 Swedish krona per share.
At press time, Scandic stock was trading at 85.38 Swedish krona ($9.51) a share, an increase of 5.9% year over year. The OMX Stockholm 30 stock exchange was up 4.36% over the same period.