THE STORY OF RUNO

1991 – THE CULTURAL-HISTORICAL BUILDINGS

Welcome warmly to RUNO Hotel Porvoo. Let me introduce myself: I am Erkka Hirvonen, founder and hotel manager of RUNO. RUNO has been my dream for over 15 years — the idea that one day I would develop my own hotel project. My story began when I was about 7 years old, in 1991, when my father inherited half of a small manor from my great-grandfather, who had been displaced from Karelia.

When Finland lost Karelia to Russia after World War II, displaced persons were allocated properties in Finland. My great-grandfather’s family, along with ten other displaced families, shared the Rutumi Manor and its land. Years after my grandfather’s death, my parents acquired the other half of the manor from its then-owner. This began over five years of restoration work, and my three brothers and I spent summers and winters restoring the manor, so I became familiar from childhood with the restoration of culturally and historically significant buildings.

2001 – RESTAURANTS & IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

When the manor restoration was complete, we decided to turn it into a catering and event venue. That way, we could not only show our guests what we had accomplished, but also offer them a piece of the beautiful history of the manor. In the early days, our family of four brothers operated the manor, along with the first head chef and his family of five daughters.

The manor’s history held many interesting stories: the famous Finnish sculptor Ville Vallgren’s aunt, Laura Vallgren, had served as the manor’s hostess during its golden age in the mid-1800s. Ville Vallgren wrote about the manor in his ABC book, and we used this material both in our restoration and in planning our service model.

My parents wanted to create an experience for guests in which they would truly feel as though they were in a mid-19th century manor. To support that, they hired two actors to portray the manor’s lady, Laura Vallgren, and its master, Karl-Johan Gylling, who welcomed groups to the manor and led guests into the golden-age world of the manor. All of us employees, siblings and daughters had our roles in the drama: we spoke in an old-fashioned way, so I myself learned the meaning of playfulness and experiential storytelling in customer service.

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2005 - STUDIES

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Our manor’s event business ignited in me a passion for the hotel and restaurant industry, which led me to work in restaurants, bars, and event services, and eventually study hospitality and hotel management. In my early years of study, I became drawn to hotels because of their more mysterious profile. Hotels were more versatile and more complex than restaurants and bars, and therefore more interesting to me.

Hotels offered much more time and more opportunities to create experiences. That meant that, as a highly empathetic person, I would have greater opportunity to create positive feelings in guests, which is what fascinates me in this field. At the same time, my mother kept saying that our manor would struggle to get meeting groups because there was no lodging.

Inspired by that, I decided to study in my thesis the development of a small hotel in the manor’s old barn, and thereby learn all that is required to operate and develop a hotel. When my thesis and hotel development plan were completed, I understood how complex, challenging, and expensive it is to develop a hotel project — and therefore we had no ability to realize a hotel at the manor then.

But, being someone who loves challenges and fascinated by the complexity of the hotel world, a dream arose in me: if one day I could put the theory learned in hotel development into practice, I would undertake my own hotel project. Pursuing that dream, I headed abroad to build my skills.

In my third year of studies, I had long sought an opportunity to work at a hotel, but it was extremely difficult. The Finnish hotel industry was rather dull over 15 years ago, and still is to some extent. Ultimately, I applied to be an exchange student in Dubai, because when I studied interesting hotel markets, Dubai came up frequently. There I was drawn to a kind of dreamlike “anything is possible” mentality — exactly the attitude I needed to fulfill my dream.

I eventually went to Dubai to study hotel management at a top school and intern in a top hotel of the same company, Jumeirah. After gaining a year of Dubai experience and completing my thesis, I realized that my true dream was to develop my own hotel project, so I returned to Dubai to learn hotel operations in many different facets, using lessons I had learned in my thesis. While working in Dubai across operations, the commercial side, and development, I began seeking more learning, so I started my MBA focused on tourism and hotel development. Alongside that work, I also studied potential real estate and hotel markets around the world, such as Greece during its real estate crisis in 2015 — wondering whether somewhere I could find a property for my hotel project.

I never even considered Finland a potential market at that time. Young me thought: who would want to travel to Finland, let alone Porvoo, my hometown? During that time I also developed a restaurant concept focused on “social and cross-cultural dining,” but in a first meeting with an angel investor, the idea and concept were shot down immediately and I surrendered — though years later I saw the “social dining” restaurant concept emerge in the world. From that I learned: the next time I pitch to investors, I must prepare better and not give up so easily.

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