While of absolutely no consequence, I’m curious if anyone can make sense of this…
The X Hotel Oslo sure looks like a Moxy to me!
I’m considering a trip to Oslo (long story, but Icelandair has good fares out of there, and I’ve been wanting to review the airline again), and I was looking at hotel options.
I visited Marriott’s site, and saw the one option in the brand’s portfolio is the X Hotel. The small image next to the hotel’s name sure looked to me like the typical room you’d expect at a Moxy, which is one of Marriott’s limited service and extremely consistent brands.
Then I looked at the pictures of the hotel, and, ummm, I’m pretty sure that’s a Moxy? I mean, there’s a sign outside that says “Moxy.”
And the lobby looks like a Moxy.
And the rooms look like a Moxy.
Yet on the website, you’ll only find mention of the X Hotel, and you won’t find any mention of this property being associated with Moxy. It’s a little odd, because this doesn’t seem to be associated with any other Marriott brand either, but instead, just has its own name with no associated branding.
What’s going on with the X Hotel Oslo?
Suffice it to say that I’m intrigued. Looking online, this property did in fact open as a Moxy back in late 2016. It would appear that this property changed branding from a Moxy to X Hotel at some point in the spring of 2024, so it happened around 18 months ago.
However, I haven’t actually been able to find an explanation for why. Collectively OMAAT readers know just about everything, so I’m curious, does anyone have a clue what’s going on here? I’m trying to figure out who benefits by this not being a Moxy?
Is there some very specific Moxy brand standard that the hotel isn’t following, which requires it to brand otherwise? It doesn’t appear that this comes down to some contract dispute between the two parties otherwise, or else you’d think the hotel would cut ties with Marriott (or vice versa).
It kind of reminds of the 2018 situation, where the W Hotel Al Habtoor City Dubai left Marriott, and joined Hilton. When it rebranded, they changed the name from W Hotel to V Hotel. Funny as that was, I could make more sense of it, in terms of actually needing to rebrand due to a change in management company.
Bottom line
The X Hotel Oslo belongs to Marriott, but apparently isn’t a Moxy, even though the sign out front says that’s what it is. Of Marriott’s many thousands of hotels around the globe, this is easily the quirkiest hotel branding situation I’ve seen.
Does anyone know what’s going on with the non-Moxy Oslo?
