Billionaire’s Sommerro Hotel in Oslo Taps Into Immersive Neighborhood Trend

It's trendy for hotels to try to create a live-like-a-local experience for travelers, but Sommerro House in Oslo, which launched in September 2022, will prompt its rivals to level up their games.

A project backed by the Scandinavian billionaire Petter Stordalen, Sommerro is a 231-room “neighborhood hotel" — meaning that it's full of offerings for locals, like a cinema, a library, and even a restored public bath. It hopes that the hotel appeals to nearby residents as well as travelers who want to feel like residents, too. 

"The hotel is housed in an old office building for an electric company,” explained Siri Løining, brand director. "Locals used to come into the building and pay their bills."

Sommerro, which is dripping in Art Deco detail, hopes to keep the neighbors coming in — now paying for food and drinks, rather than energy. “When we started this project, we asked, 'How do we bring the locals into the house, so they feel a part of the project?’,” Løining said. So far, Løining said they’ve hit a nerve — in a good way — and Sommerro is growing, with the new Villa Inkognito, a restored 18th-century villa located adjacent to the property, opening on April 17.

Sommerro has been described as "like walking into the film set for a period Agatha Christie movie." It belongs to a category of narrative-driven, design-led hotels that Oslo could use more of. The hotel is well situated for travelers — a five-minute walk to the city cen