“Haparanda has become the major trading center in the Barents Region with increasing interest especially from Norway and Russia. It’s a development I like and therefore it is natural for me to establish a hotel in Haparanda. I’m confident that our new hotel will help increase the city’s attractiveness further,” says Petter Stordalen, the Norwegian investor and Chariman of Nordic Choice Hotels.
The new hotel will be a part of Barents Center, a town-in-the-town, to be built in on both sides of the Haparanda, Tornio borderline. Construction of both Barents Center, including the 20-floor tall hotel, starts next spring.
The hotel will open in 2016 with 208 rooms, half of them on the Swedish side and the other half on the Finnish side as the national borderline goes through the building. A 1,000 square meters restaurant with a kitchen focusing on local food from the Barents Region. The conference facilities can take up to 500 people, but likely more attractive will be the 2,200 square meters large spa facilities on the hotel’s top three floors.
Quality Hotel’s own portal brags about the new spa stating it will include the “freshest sauna in the Barents Region.”
With 20 floors, Quality Hotel Barents will be the tallest in the Barents Region, two floors higher than the newly opened 18-floors Rica Hotel Narvik. Other tall hotels in the Barents Region are Arktika in Murmansk with 17 floors, Radisson Hotel in Bodø with 14 floors and Scandic Plaza in Umeå with 14 floors. Soon, a new 17 floors Rica hotel opens in Bodø.
In addition to the hotel, the new Barents Centre includes stores, cinemas, gymnasium, innovation center, arena and offices to be built around a new artificial town square on the Finnish, Swedish borderline, as previously reported by BarentsObserver.
