Jonas Stenberg: The Nightclub Promoter Who Built a Hospitality Empire
Jonas Stenberg, the founder, owner and CEO of ESS Group, one of Scandinavia’s most innovative hospitality companies. Image credit: ESS Group
Jonas Stenberg—the entrepreneur who built a billion-krona hospitality company by ignoring the rules of the hotel industry. Most global hotel groups are built with venture capital, real estate funds and carefully structured expansion strategies. ESS Group grew out of a very different environment: the nightlife scene of Gothenburg.
Jonas Stenberg had no formal hotel training and no initial ambition to build a hotel company. His early career unfolded in restaurants and nightclubs, where work started late in the evening and ended early in the morning. It was there he developed the principle that would later define ESS Group’s philosophy: people rarely travel for a room alone. They travel for atmosphere, for energy and for the feeling of a place.
Today Stenberg leads ESS Group, one of Scandinavia’s most innovative hospitality companies. The business operates 15 destinations across the region, employs more than 4,000 people and generates annual revenues of approximately SEK 3.5bn.
Unlike most international hotel groups, ESS has grown entirely organically, without external capital, and it’s still led by the founder who started it.
A risk that started everything
The story began in 2007 at Ystad Saltsjöbad, a historic seaside hotel on Sweden’s southern coast frequented by locals. At the time, Jonas was 32 years old. When the opportunity to acquire the property appeared, financing required personal guarantees and loans from family and friends. It was a significant risk, but one that would ultimately reshape parts of the Scandinavian hospitality landscape.
Hotels as destinations
Traditional hotel models focus on rooms as the primary product. Stenberg saw it differently. For him the room is almost the least interesting part of the experience.
What defines a destination is everything around it: the restaurants, architecture, music, pools, bars and the social energy created by the people who gather there. That philosophy became the foundation of ESS Group’s approach: hotels as destinations rather than simply places to stay.
The result is a portfolio of distinctive properties including The Steam Hotel — created inside a former power plant in Västerås — Ellery Beach House on Stockholm’s archipelago, Fýri Resort in the Norwegian mountains and Jacy’z Hotel & Resort in Gothenburg.
This destination-first strategy is slowly gaining significant international acclaim as in 2024, The Steam Hotel and Ystad Saltsjöbad were both named among the best in the world in the Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards. Most recently, the group’s 2024 opening, Maryhill Estate – a historic castle acquired in 2019, now transformed into a 163-room resort – was recognized on the prestigious Travel+Leisure “IT List” as one of only three hotels in the Nordics.
Restaurants, design, music and cultural programming are as central to the experience as the rooms themselves. Stenberg often says he would rather build hotels that guests return to again and again than hotels that simply fill beds.
An entrepreneur’s approach to growth
Despite its scale today, ESS Group still operates with a distinctly entrepreneurial mindset.Stenberg has remained CEO since the beginning and has deliberately chosen a slower, organic growth path rather than the aggressive expansion strategies common in international hotel groups.
The absence of venture capital has given him something he values highly: the freedom to make decisions based on long-term vision rather than quarterly expectations. It has also allowed ESS to pursue projects that often break with industry conventions, where architecture, restaurants and cultural programming are as important as accommodation.
A hospitality company with wider ambitions
From early on, Stenberg resisted the idea of becoming simply a hotel operator. ESS Group has therefore been involved in ventures far beyond traditional hospitality — from wine production and fashion to recruitment technology, event production and sustainability projects.
Some of these initiatives are commercial. Others are simply extensions of curiosity. For Stenberg, new ventures are a way to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive inside the company.
One of Scandinavia’s most influential (and least known) entrepreneurs
Despite leading a company with thousands of employees and billions in revenue, Jonas Stenberg remains a relatively low-profile figure internationally.
Unlike many entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry, he has rarely sought the spotlight. Instead, the focus has remained on building teams, culture and destinations that people want to return to.
Which makes his story all the more compelling. In less than two decades, he has built a company that has grown from roughly SEK 50m in revenue to SEK 3.5bn, created thousands of jobs and helped redefine the hospitality experience across Scandinavia.
Yet outside the region, his name is still largely unknown. And that may be exactly why the story of Jonas Stenberg is beginning to attract international attention.