BEST WESTERN JULA HOTELL KONFE

Stayed in room 431 with a view of the mini-golf course. Cozy room with fine art. Nice bed and fluffy pillows. What I missed in the room was a small refrigerator. Kettles were always nice to have for being able to have a cup of coffee in the room. What was most annoying was the faucet under the sink that kept wanting to open. Pleasant hotel and we who are not that interested in art anyway walked around and looked. Incredibly beautiful art and fun that someone bought it in person. Fantastic good breakfast and pleasant. To even just be able to sit down and have a drink.

Very pleasant hotel with service-minded staff with a nice welcome. The room was clean and nice, the beds comfortable. We ate at a restaurant that served very good, well-cooked, and delicious food. The breakfast was hot and okay with everything one wanted. A minus was that it was poorly cleaned in the lounge/reception. We were in the lounge areas in the reception by the bar in the afternoon/evening to have a drink and it was very poorly cleaned there. The surfaces were so dusty that it was probably several weeks since they were cleaned. Too bad, the hotel was clean and fresh by the way. Good parking, but the traffic from the major motorway right outside the hotel was a bit disruptive.

It was the couple behind the Jula group, Lars Göran and Irene Blank, who in 2007 built Jula Konsthotell with the ambition to preserve Lars Göran’s passion for art and culture by displaying his large collection of original works by artists such as Anders Zorn, Carl Larsson, Bruno Liljefors, Bengt Lindström, Peter Dahl and Jenny Nyström. The story begins with the couple starting a series production of Julakapen, a combined wood cutter and splitter at the farm Jultorp in Västergötland. They soon expanded their business and their success was monumental. In 1985, the first department store was opened in Skara and today the Jula Group has 129 stores with a total turnover of just over SEK 10 billion. No wonder Lars Göran could start collecting precious art… The hotel, which is now called Skara konsthotell, is not far from the E20 and offers free parking. Here we stayed a sunny spring day, admired the art in the dining room and conference room (just in case protected behind alarmed glass) and finished with a coffee on the patio. Very nice, even sensational. Where can you see the corresponding collection of Swedish art? P.S. In 2021, the historic Skara Stadshotell opened, a few km away in the center of the city. The hotel has been renovated and is now run by Jula and there are also lots of interesting art, including over 100 works by Lars Lerin adorning the walls, one of the world's largest Lars Lerin collections. This is the next art trip.