How Stordalen’s Hospitality Empire Came Back Stronger Than Ever

How the Passion Economy has opened up new types of careers, leading with passion, working with creators and turning around a crisis into a strength.

It’s always easy to look at others and wish you had what they have. But if you focus on what you have going on for you instead of what everyone else is doing, you will find your way. - Emilie Stordalen

Stordalen is a Norwegian hotelier family, so far spearheaded by Petter Stordalen, known for his passion for the environment and his dedication to the companies within the privately owned corporation, Strawberry Group. The largest being Nordic Choice Hotels, which owns and runs over 200 hotels with more than 17,000 employees.

Through Strawberry, the family also controls 10 other businesses that employ thousands more in the sectors of art, finance, hospitality and real estate. Petter’s personality is displayed in his own social accounts, which boast over 200,000 followers who love his pompous entries, flamboyant style and dedication to combating environmental issues.

Petter works alongside his three adult children, all of whom have chosen to partner with Petter in the goal of making Strawberry the most sustainable investment company in the Nordic region.

In the leadership team is Petter’s daughter Emilie Stordalen, part-owner of Strawberry and CMO of Nordic Choice Hotels. She shares her father’s passion for shaping Strawberry into an investment company with environmental and social impact in its core.

Emilie says she had to explore many different areas before she found her place within Strawberry, working in project management and hospitality. Growing up, she was interested in traveling and left home when she was 16 years old to finish her education in the UK. She explored the world and studied abroad for 9 years while also exploring different areas and industries.

Prior to joining Strawberry and Nordic Choice Hotels, Emilie worked as the marketing manager for Clarion Hotel Group, The Hub. She has also worked as a consultant for Deloitte, a consulting firm and professional services network headquartered in London, UK.

After being introduced to a wide variety of businesses, Emilie gained an understanding of how operations are traditionally conducted. She also started to discover ways to streamline a business under a more sustainable model. She joined Strawberry with a vision to reinvent the way business is done and to transform an already environmentally conscious corporation into something even more sustainable. This fitted well with Petter’s “Strawberry philosophy” of cultivating and making the best of your own resources – including the planet.

The son of a grocery store owner, Petter’s first entrepreneurial endeavor was at 12 years old, selling strawberries at the local markets. One night, he complained to his father that his berries weren’t as good as his competitors. His father responded with just a few words that stayed with Petter for a lifetime.

He reminded Petter that he could only sell the strawberries he had. No amount of wishing or thoughts he had about the competitors’ berries would change the situation. All Petter could do was to use the berries he had to build his little business one step at a time - eventually into what he would later envision.

Years later, Petter attended the Norwegian School of Marketing before getting his start to manage large shopping malls. From there, he moved into hospitality and beyond with property development, restaurants and hotels.

Part of the Strawberry philosophy is to care for your resources so you can effectively grow your business. The process of learning how to make Strawberry more sustainable started mid-pandemic.

“We started in the middle of the (COVID-19) crisis, because you can use crisis to renew yourself renew the company,” Emilie said.

At Nordic Choice, she’s been learning about operations within the hotel chain and working on initiatives to create more holistic practices. With more than 17,000 employees to retrain and integrate into a new, more sustainable model, both Emilie and Petter say it’s a long process, but it’s worth the work.

“It’s more of an evolution than a revolution,” Petter said.

Petter & Emilie Stordalen took some time to talk about the current evolution of Strawberry and how a focus on sustainability and flexibility in business has contributed to thriving after Covid.

Gustaf Lundberg Toresson: Petter, how did you get your start as an entrepreneur and how has your strawberry philosophy impacted your companies?

Petter: It goes way back. It started in my childhood. I was born and raised in a grocery store in a small town called Porsgrunn. At the age of 12, I loved selling strawberries at one of the local marketplaces. Competition was fearless and I had four or five other competitors.

Often, my berries were a bit smaller than the competition, and so I complained to my father one night. He always sat beside me when I went to bed. He told me: “Petter, sell the berries you have because they’re the only ones you can sell.”

I thought about that for a long time, and I took that philosophy when deciding how to compete. I think it’s genius because it’s always easy to look at others and wish you had what they have. But if you focus on what you have going on for you instead of what everyone else is doing, you can have success. So, the most important thing that’s brought me to all the different things in my life was actually strawberries.

When we started the hotel company 25 years ago, we didn’t have the best hotels. It was opposite of what we have today. Today, we are number one in the Nordics but at the time we weren’t. Back then we said the one thing we do have is the best people, because the best people will eventually make the best hotels. We used what we had to grow into the more than 200 hotels we are today.

So, the strawberry philosophy is about using the resources you have, like people and the planet. It’s about caring for those resources, and of course, it’s about profit as well. Strawberry Group is the umbrella for all our other companies and for sustainable new capitalism.

Lundberg Toresson: Emilie, what are your responsibilities and what do you focus on at Nordic Choice?

Emilie: I’m now project manager for Nordic Choice Hotels. I’m also working through Strawberry as the VP of Marketing for Choice. I’ve been going through the different departments in the company and learning about all operations. I’ve worked a lot in our new hotels, and I helped start one of our new hotels, the biggest hotel in Norway. I’m so very lucky to be in this position.

We’re post-pandemic now, and it’s a good time to renew the company. So, we’re starting a process to totally change the company and create a new universe for guests. We’ll give them a totally new experience, considering what people really want in this new normal after the pandemic. It’s a process to totally change the company with 17,000 employees.

Lundberg Toresson: Given the family you were raised in, have you always been interested in working in hospitality?

Emilie: No, I haven’t. I had to go and get myself an education. I had to work somewhere else because I had to learn. So, from wehn I was 16, I had almost 9 years abroad, studying different fields. Consulting was something I really liked, so I tried an internship at a consulting firm.

And then I got a full-time job at Deloitte when I moved home to Norway. I actually enjoyed seeing different sectors and work with airline companies, oil companies, big corps and startups and so on. That was great because I got to test that a lot of different areas, but I actually found it most fun to work with hotels.

I think a lot of parents often put a lot of pressure on their kids to continue the family business, but my dad always told me and my brothers that we had to do what we want. It was an easy choice for me in the end because hotels are fun, and it’s a good thing to be in a family doing something fun. But I knew I needed to try different things first and I was glad to be able to do that.

Lundberg Toresson: What is it like working so closely with family?

Petter: It’s fantastic. I have three kids who are working in three different areas, and you have to respect the challenges and the dynamics. But we’re lucky because we actually enjoy hanging out with each other outside work. We also been strategic and a little smart about it, so we don't work too close with each other, and everyone is in their own kind of "lane".

Lundberg Toresson: Petter, you’re well known for your spectacular entrances. What inspires you to do these epic stunts, and how did you get your 200,000-member social media following?

Petter: When you open your 60th hotel, media aren’t that interested anymore. But if you do a stunt, it gathers attention. Especially if it can go wrong. And I, always love a chance to do something spectacular and sometimes things do go wrong but that’s just how it is. I once ran down a 78 meters high building during a hotel opening, and another time I was going to do a jump on a jet ski in my tuxedo. We tested it once and it was perfect. At the event we had 10,000 people. I went way too fast because of adrenaline. I did the jump too high, and I fell on the concrete. That went on YouTube as "biggest a** plant of the year".

With social media, Emilie’s better than me, way more professional. But I think you can use your platform for a lot of good things. For me it’s important to use the platform be very vocal about what we believe in. And I used my social media to be very vocal about a lot of things. I’m vocal about everything from paperwork to taxes to posting our stunts. You need to have all those things on social media – some fun things, daily life things and big things.

Emilie: I think my dad has been exceptional at social media and even could be called a creator, because he’s a little bit of that Richard Branson type. He’s always dared to do new things and show sides of himself that many business people wouldn’t. I think he started using social media when Instagram started, so he’s been doing it for a while.

For me it was different because I’m much more guarded and have a more professional relationship to it. I think that's a tricky thing to work with, especially because Instagram is such an influential and it's very, like creative and inspiring place. How does the business fit into it?

Lundberg Toresson: How are you incorporating social media and creators into the evolution of Strawberry?

Emilie: We work with many types of creators in the hotel industry because we have so many hotels. We’re working with influencers, content creators, videographers, and photographers. But we’re going to professionalize that part a bit more and expand a bit more as we rework Strawberry.

There’s an interesting shift in social media right now, because as many influencers are personal brands, they're also their own companies. I think they are going to start being held to the same standards as other companies when it comes to things like the environment, diversity, and relationships with suppliers and customers. I don’t see how those standards aren’t going to come into the influencer world as well.

When we collaborate with brands, we’re asking what they do for the environment, how they view the supply chain and so on. And I feel like that’s missing on the creator side a bit. So, we’re going to have to professionalize the way we work with influencers and set requirements for partnership. It’s important because influencers reach so many people and it can be an organic, honest and fun way to connect with people.

Lundberg Toresson: How has the pandemic changed you and your perspective on the future?

Petter: I think the pandemic has changed me forever. I’m humbler than I was before and I realized what makes me happy. What makes me happy is to go into the headquarters every morning and meet my colleagues.

The pandemic actually gave us a chance to come back stronger than ever. Right now, we are making decisions about new tools, new concepts and how we can renew the whole experience. It’s giving us a chance to emphasize philosophies and values, realizing it’s not about money, it’s about people.

Most people thought we would never manage to go through a year like we went through. And we’ve been through it for two years. And we’re sitting here today, financially even stronger than before the pandemic.

Emilie: I think it’s important coming out of the pandemic to be part of a team and realize that we can be a global team for things like fighting climate change. It’s easy to think that it doesn’t matter what we do, but if everybody does something we could manage to solve the problem. We want to be an active part in that.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.