Good examples from Linköping’s tourism industry

A person forming a heart with their hands with the cathedral and Linköping in the background

Be inspired by good examples from our Environmental Ambassadors and Environmentally Certified businesses within Linköping’s tourism industry on how a business can work with environmental sustainability.

Vårdnäs Hotell och Stiftsgård – Environmental Ambassador

At Vårdnäs Hotell och Stiftsgård, they work with nudging to encourage and guide guests to make sustainable choices through various methods, such as encouraging the use of personal bottles, using fewer towels, and serving on smaller plates and bowls. They see sustainability as their responsibility, and guests should not feel lectured during their stay about how to act sustainably.
They involve their staff in the business’s sustainability efforts through methods like Plogging, which involves staff picking up litter together, creating a connection to their local area and the nature surrounding the business.

Read more about Vårdnäs Hotell och Stiftsgård.

Naturlogi – Environmental Ambassador

They are founded on the principle that the business should be sustainable, which is clearly shown on their website. “Sustainability permeates the business and isn’t something we specifically work with, it is a part of us.”
Everything Naturlogi’s guests encounter has sustainability at its core, from local food to books in the rooms about learning about sustainable development and the forest. As the following quote describes: “In a way, we don’t encourage guests to make sustainable choices during their stay, we simply remove all other options.

Flygvapenmuseum – Environmentally Certified Business

Flygvapenmuseum collaborates with Östgötatrafiken and offers cheaper entry tickets to the museum if you travel by bus.
During vacation activities for children visiting the museum, crafts are often made from leftover waste such as toilet rolls and milk cartons.
In one of the green areas outside the museum building, the lawn is allowed to grow all summer to attract insects.

Quality Hotel Ekoxen and Quality Hotel The Box – Environmentally Certified Business

Conferences booked at their hotels are informed about the carbon footprint of their conference after their visit to inspire sustainable choices.
With messages at the breakfast buffet like “hungry stomachs, empty plates,” they encourage their guests to reduce their food waste and actively measure food waste three times a day using a digital solution.

Read more about Quality Hotel Ekoxen and Quality Hotel The Box

Stångs Magasin and Stångs Mjärdevi – Environmentally Certified Business

At Stångs Magasin, they use their menus to inform guests about their food philosophy by telling in the menu how they work with local food focus. Menus often highlight the origin of ingredients, and vegetarian dishes are at the top of the menu. “In our menus, it’s the greens that play the leading role, not the protein.”
They actively work to reduce their food waste through various methods, including using the Karma app to sell food that would otherwise risk becoming waste and having a weekly lunch menu which reduces lunch waste.

Read more about Stångs Magasin and Stångs Mjärdevi

Restaurang Jord – Environmentally Certified Business

At Restaurang Jord, sustainability is part of their DNA, which is reflected in how they handle ingredients. Their philosophy focuses on local and locally sourced food and working with whole ingredients to avoid waste. By picking a large amount of ingredients when they are in season and drying and fermenting them, they can also use these ingredients at other times of the year.
The location for the restaurant, Valla Berså, was chosen for being a zero-energy house with solar energy and many other sustainable solutions, and they also maintain a good dialogue with the property owner, facilitating the development of the restaurant’s sustainability efforts.

Gamla Linköping – Environmentally Certified Business

Gamla Linköping actively works with environmental sustainability through its cultural-historical mission. The museum is part of the national gene bank effort, which involves preserving old species of plants and animals that are at risk of disappearing. Through POM (Program for Cultivated Diversity), the museum serves as a local clone archive for unique cultural plants from Östergötland. This is shared with visitors by selling cuttings, seeds, apple must, sheepskins, and vegetables in their visitor center & museum shop. In this way, the open-air museum contributes to the preservation of biological diversity while conveying the cultural-historical heritage.
When acquiring new furniture for the business, Linköping Municipality’s furniture ladder is used, which involves bringing in furniture in the following order: 1. Reuse, 2. Repair and renovate, 3. Buy reused, 4. Buy new.
Part of their educational activities focuses on teaching about biodiversity and the importance of preserving different species, which is reflected in the animals they care for.

HaMa Adventures – Environmentally Certified Business

At HaMa Adventures, the forest is an important resource for their high ropes course experience. They actively work to preserve and maintain the forest as untouched as possible, and when constructing adventure courses, they use recycling where possible and are careful not to harm the environment with their construction methods.
Creating experiences in nature and encouraging more people to engage in and spend time in nature is believed to create a ripple effect, allowing more people to learn to care more about nature and spend more time outdoors.
Since 2025, HaMa Adventures has collaborated with Naturlogi to offer unique dining experiences. Meals are cooked over an open fire in the forest, focusing on locally produced and environmentally friendly ingredients. Suppliers are consciously chosen from the local area – often farmers, food artisans, or their own crops. This focus on sustainable food production provides HaMa Adventures visitors with an experience where adventure in nature is combined with care for the local heritage and environment.

Scandic Frimurarehotellet – Environmentally Certified Business

An important part of the sustainability work is to inform and include staff in these issues, and Scandic Frimurarehotellet does this in their introduction of new employees and their environmental group with representatives from all departments who can share information from and to their regular meetings.
One of their focus areas is also to reduce food waste, which they work on in several ways. This includes using leftovers from the breakfast buffet for other dishes served at lunch and dinner. Croissants that are left over are used, for example, to create afternoon snacks for visiting conferences.

Read more about Scandic Frimurarehotellet

Scandic Linköping Väst – Environmentally Certified Business

To encourage guests to travel more sustainably, they offer bicycles that guests can borrow for free to get around the city and leave the car at the parking lot. They also continuously work to offer charging stations for electric cars and have plans to increase the number of spaces.
In the green areas surrounding the hotel, they have created flower beds to attract butterflies and bees to promote biodiversity.

Read more about Scandic Linköping Väst

Scandic Linköping City – Environmentally Certified Business

They actively collaborate with the other Scandic hotels in Linköping on the reuse of furniture by donating furniture that is no longer used. When something needs to be renovated or purchased, they always check with the other hotels if there is a surplus of any larger product they can take over.
They advertise food at risk of spoiling in the Too Good To Go app for sale. People with the app can then book the food and come to the hotel to purchase it at a reduced price, instead of the food going to waste.