Ssssh, don’t tell anyone, but I think I’ve found one of the best Category 1 Hyatt hotels in the entire system. I had such a pleasant stay at the Story Hotel Studio in Malmö, Sweden.
Story Hotel Studio Malmö Review – A Hyatt JdV Property
Hyatt has many brands within its portfolio of hotels. Its JdV (joie de vivre) brand is described as:
The JdV by Hyatt brand is a collection of original hotels with a deep respect for the neighborhoods that make up each destination. Each hotel is uniquely inspired by its surroundings and is a story about the communities we call home.
Story Hotel Studio Malmö is part of that portfolio and a great value as a Category 1 hotel in the World of Hyatt program. The room was 125USD per night or 3,500 points (off-peak). Since I value Hyatt points at two cents each, I used points.
This is not a luxury hotel by any means. Quite the contrary, it is very much an “efficiency” property with small rooms and limited amenities, but the room was comfortable and the breakfast quite satisfactory.
Location
The hotel is located along the water near the Malmö Old Lighthouse, an ideal location for exploring the city by foot. If coming by train, you can get off at Malmö Centralstation, which is located about 650 meters from the hotel.
Check-In
I arrived in Copenhagen before sunrise, took the train to Malmö, and arrived at the hotel at 7:00 am. Graciously, my room was ready, which was so appreciated and allowed me to shower before going out for coffee.
The building is multi-purpose with the hotel occupying only a subset of floors and the others used as office space. The lobby was filled with greenery and the hotel check-in desk was located in the middle.
Guest Room
My room, 1214, was small, with a bed taking up most of it, but it was perfectly suitable for me and had a great view of the harbor, an area that was once bustling with industry. I appreciated the bench along the window the chair with roundtable that served as my desk. The closet was open rather than enclosed and a refrigerator had two bottles of water in it (free for all guests).
Food could be ordered to the room:
The bathroom was quite typical, my friend told, me for Swedish bathrooms and really felt like a cruise ship. The shower was not a separate area, but shared the floor with the rest of the bathroom and partitioned only by a small glass panel. Shower amenities were from Grown Alchemist.
Gym
The hotel has no pool, gym, or wellness area, but partners with Nordic Wellness, a gym operator in Sweden, to offer guests access. I find this is an ideal arrangement because I can often get a much better workout in a large gym than a small hotel one.
Each time I wanted to workout, I requested a key at the front desk which gave me access to the gym. I then ran to the gym, about 600 meters away, and enjoyed a pair of superb trainings followed by the sauna after.
Once cultural thing I noticed: street shoes were not allowed in the gym. Everyone had to take off their shoes when entering the gym and change to gym shoes. This policy was present even though there was no rain or snow during our visit. I ended up wearing disposable shoe covers over my running shoes. I noticed this when walking by other gyms too.
Dining
Hotel guests are invited to a complimentary breakfast at Kasai in the Sky, the hotel’s main restaurant that features Japanese food. Breakfast is not Japanese, though, but includes a high-quality assortment of hot and cold breakfast items. I enjoyed a fresh green salad with Rugbrød, green juice, fresh-squeezed orange juice, strong coffee, scrambled eggs, watermelon, and yogurt
Breakfast is served from 6:30 am to 10:00 am Monday – Friday and from 8:00 am to 11:00 am on weekends. The restaurant is open for dinner from 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm Monday – Saturday.
The restaurant has a nice outdoor terrace that I am sure is quite pleasant during the warmer months.
In the lobby, Salads and Smoothies offers hotel guests and office workers (as the name implies…) salads and smoothies (and sandwiches and coffee too) from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm Monday – Friday.
CONCLUSION
This is a simple hotel, but clean, comfortable, and reasonable. Breakfast is a plus, as is the location. This was my first time in Malmö and I would not hesitate to return here again.
How does the $125 rate compare to the local competition? I recall having stayed in a perfectly decent budget hotel in Tårnby (just to the other side of CPH airport) for €60 or so. Granted, that was four or five years ago, but I can’t imagine Malmö being a very expensive city to stay in.
There are some under $100 (like Clarion), but most are in that range.
The Clarion Malmo Live tends to be comparably priced to the Story Malmo or higher priced than the Story Malmo when I’m around. But the Story Malmo sells out more often, in large part due to it having far fewer floors/rooms and the Hyatt affiliation.
Sometimes I am now finding the Clarion Hotel Temperance to be more highly priced than the Story Hotel, and there seems to be a pattern to when it’s higher and when it’s not. The Story hotel tends to have its prices in a tighter range throughout the year than most of the other hotels in the city.
Often what I see for prices when standard rooms are available across all properties in the city is that the Clarion Malmo Live is the most expensive property in the city, followed by the Scandic Kramer, then the Story hotel, then another Scandic and/or the Clarion Collection Hotel Temperance. Sometimes MJ’s is on the Kramer and Story pricing level.
The Radisson used to be the most expensive property in the city but that was before the Clarion Malmo Live more or less took the top spot for prices in the city. But none of the Malmo hotels tend to be that expensive and the prices for standard rooms usually cluster in the $70-$160 room range for the chain hotels in the city.
About the Story Hotel water bottles, each of those bottles are worth 1 SEK each if recycled. The bigger grocery stores have recycling stations.
This hotel is screaming to be converted to a Hotel Indigo or a Moxy. The owners would save a lot of money by skimping on benefits that IHG or Marriott won’t enforce!!!!
Hotels in Sweden that don’t include breakfast for all guests would suffer even worse occupancy than they do on weekends and on off peak times of the year. It’s the breakfast proposition that helps add a substantial amount of demand that hotels in Sweden need to maximize their returns. They count on too many Swedish guests to make it work out, and a lot of that local demand is tied to breakfast inclusion. As it is, the Story breakfasts are more downmarket than the Clarion breakfasts,
Booked! For me it was 1,400 SEK or 6,500 points. I went with cash. Basically a break even in my mind. Already looking forward to the gym followed by sauna.
Sometimes it’s 3500 points per night, which is why I use it quite a bit for mattress runs.
The Clarion hotel Temperance used to be 8k Choice Privileges points per night. Now due to a recent devaluation across Scandinavia, the Clarion Hotel Temperance in Malmo is 16k points per night and now more comparably priced to the Clarion Malmo Live in Choice points. This Choice program devaluation makes it more likely that I will use the Story Malmo hotel even more when looking at using points.
The corner suite is well worth the extra 3K points.
Those corner suites are junior suites. And there is the risk that the connecting room door of “the suites” leads to a room occupied by unrelated guests. They do get a sofa and a more comprehensive view of the area from the assigned accommodation, but there is no bedroom area separated from where the sofa is in “the suites”.
They’ve been reasonably good about upgrading Globalists to the XX03 “corner suites” when the hotel is going for 3500 points per night. It seems to help with upgrades as a Globalist if the stay has been booked prior to the day of check-in, it’s off-peak in terms of demand and only a one or two night stay.
For Globalists upgraded to XX03 “corner suites”, the manager often has a signed note placed in the rooms along with a welcome amenity of a confectionery item or two.
For those taking a train into Malmo C station to get to this hotel, the way to minimize the outdoor walk is to stay on the underground train track platform and follow the signs toward Anna Linds Plats and take the moving walkway up from the underground track level and then the stairs or elevators to your right side after getting off the upward inclined moving walkway. Then the walk outdoor to the hotel is something like two minutes.
I suspect we will see this Hyatt property become at least a Category 2 property. Not looking forward to that either — especially as my 8k and 10k Choice point redemptions in the area have been eliminated with a devaluation hit that now has them costing 16k Choice points per night.
Once again, Europe leading the way in demonstrating how lower cost properties can deliver significant value. In the 1970’s and 1980’s European hotels learned from America. Now it’s time for American hotels to learn from Europe. It is very possible to deliver a stellar product at a good value property. You just have to care.
Had a 4-night stay there back in October (King Ocean View Deluxe cash rate). They had proactively upgraded me to a suite, but I didn’t like the suite layout or it’s shows set-up so I stayed with the room I had booked. Great location with easy access to train station. And the nearest station entrance to the hotel (right next to the 7-11 on Anna Lindhs plats) puts you right at the correct platform for the train to CPH airport). Lack of a proper closet Staff were friendly. Easy to get around town on foot as well.
The downer was on my first morning, I went to Kasai for the Globalist breakfast. There were hordes of flies that had made their nest amongst the food items at the breakfast buffet. Disgusting. Needless to say I did not return there for breakfast on the following mornings.
The breakfast-included hotel typically gives a voucher to use at the Kasai restaurant for food or drink. I ask instead for the “Salad & Smoothies” vouchers instead (even as the applicable place for the S&S voucher isn’t open on weekends). I have repeatedly been told the vouchers are good for up to a year from the date they were issued by the front desk.
Yes, I brought mine home! 😉
I have about 45 so of these Story Hotel vouchers. I am curious if they would let me throw a small party at the Salads & Smoothies place on-site to use up those vouchers all at one time.
About getting between the airport and this hotel:
The cheapest trains to get between the train station closest to the hotel and to the CPH airport or main Copenhagen train station are the SJ trains that are pretty infrequent. The SJ train tickets cost as little as 95 SEK per single adult ticket one-way. The SJ trains are to be booked on the SJ.se website or SJ app and a digital ticket is issued to your email or on the app and to be user for travel. But the SJ trains across the bridge are so very infrequent arhat I don’t use them very often to cross the bridge and don’t typically buy SJ train tickets to get across the bridge,
The Skanetrafiken Oresundstag trains are the primary and most frequent trains going between Malmo and CPH airport and they now cost 150 SEK per single adult ticket one-way. The ticket can be bought at the Skanetrafiken machines at the stations served by the Oresundstag train, but I suggest using the Skanetrafiken app on your smartphones to buy the tickets and activate the tickets as needed before boarding the train. With Skanetrafiken tickets, there are discounts for group travel on the Oresundstag train as long as you buy a multi-person ticket at the time of ticket purchase on the Skanetrafiken app. I wouldn’t bother with using the self-service Skanetrafiken kiosks if you have a smartphone with the free Skanetrafiken app and have enough battery life to use the device. CPH airport and Malmo Central have free wifi networks for use so you don’t even need to draw down cellular data from your mobile phone service provider. Just note that wifi reception is good on the street level but basically non-existent from the underground track levels at CPH airport and at Malmo Central unless piggy-backing from the stopped trains wifi networks.
Just noticed your comment about the shoes thing. Yes, it’s a cultural thing for Swedes to have shoes for indoor purposes and separate shoes for outdoor purposes. This happens not only when it comes to going to the gym but also often when attending parties inside people’s private homes. Swedes rarely walk inside even their own homes with outdoor shoes on, and in some offices it’s surprising to see how many men too change shoes after getting into the offices. It wasn’t a big deal to me when I first started noticing this, as I had long ago gotten in the habit of taking off the outdoor shoes when entering homes. But when you live where it snows, where there are lots of fields, farms or yards to walk through and play in, where there are thunderstorms and the roads or sidewalks have a lot of sand, gravel or salt, then it’s just common sense to take off those shoes. Then there is the other waste and stuff that can be found on sidewalks and that people step on at times. All of that together has me preferring that people take off their outdoor shoes at the entrances to my houses.
Even young Swedish school kids at public schools are expected to have separate indoor shoes for school gym class. It wouldn’t surprise me if some families who failed to do that or rain boots for their kids even got called up by the social services authorities for failure to provide adequate footwear for their kids.