Sweden’s second and third cities sit at opposite ends of the same train line, and both reward anyone who stays inside the centre rather than beside a motorway junction. Gothenburg spreads out from a canal grid towards the harbour; Malmö packs its old town, its waterfront and its station into a space you can cross on foot in twenty minutes. Picking a central hotel in Gothenburg or Malmö is mostly a question of which square you want to walk out onto in the morning.
Six addresses at a glance
Gothenburg, from the avenue to the arena
Scandic Rubinen
Rubinen sits on Avenyn, the broad avenue that runs from Götaplatsen down towards the canal and carries most of the city’s restaurants, bars and theatres along its length. Staying here means the evening starts the moment you step outside, with no tram ride first. It also puts the Gothenburg Museum of Art and the concert hall at the top of the street within an easy walk.
Scandic Göteborg Central
The clue is in the name: this one stands beside the central station, which makes it the obvious choice if you are arriving by train from Stockholm or Malmö, or heading out to the archipelago ferries. The hotel’s own restaurant, Above, occupies an upper floor with a view across the rooftops, so dinner does not require going anywhere either. Nordstan’s shopping centre is across the road.
Scandic Opalen
Opalen is the arena hotel. It sits close to Scandinavium and the Swedish Exhibition Centre, with Liseberg amusement park a few minutes away on foot, which makes it the practical pick for a concert, an ice hockey match, a trade fair or a family weekend built around the rides. The centre of town is still a short walk or one tram stop north.
Malmö, where everything is close together
Scandic Triangeln
Triangeln is built over one of Malmö’s two main stations, which means the Øresund train to Copenhagen and its airport leaves from directly beneath you. For a trip that crosses the bridge in either direction, that is hard to beat. The shopping centre of the same name is attached, and Möllevången’s food scene is a few blocks east.
Scandic Stortorget
Malmö’s main square is the city’s front room, lined with the old town hall and a ring of cafés that spill outside as soon as the weather allows. A hotel on the square itself puts you inside that scene rather than near it, with Lilla Torg and the canal ring both a couple of minutes away.
Scandic Kramer
Kramer occupies one of the most recognisable buildings on Stortorget, a turreted landmark that has been part of the square’s skyline for well over a century. It is the Malmö address for anyone who would rather sleep inside a piece of the city than in a modern block beside it, and it leaves the whole old town within a few hundred metres.
Picking between the two cities
Gothenburg suits a longer stay: there is more ground to cover, the archipelago is a short ferry ride out, and the city spreads far enough that your hotel in the city centre genuinely changes the shape of your days. Malmö works better as a short break, partly because of its size and partly because Copenhagen sits twenty-odd minutes away by train, which turns one trip into two cities.
If you are doing both in one journey, the train between them takes around three hours, and booking rooms in both cities at the same time saves working out the second half later.
The Bottom Line
Six hotels, two cities, and the differences come down to what is outside the door: the avenue, the station, the arena, the bridge train, the square. Work out which of those matters most for the trip you are taking, then compare available rooms on your dates before the calendar fills.
All six are Scandic properties, and the chain’s Gothenburg and Malmö pages list them together if you want to weigh them side by side.
More Scandinavian city guides are waiting for you over at vougestyle.com.