Increase your direct bookings
RUNO sits at the gate of Old Porvoo, in a 1912 Art Nouveau landmark restored room by room into one of the Nordics' most admired design hotels. Its 56 rooms, its fireplace-warmed attic sauna, and its Living Room of bespoke furniture and young Finnish art all follow a single idea: a stay should feel considered in every detail. The judgement behind it belongs to founder and CEO Erkka Hirvonen, who spent years in Dubai's luxury hotels before bringing the standard home. In 2024 RUNO became the first and only hotel in Finland to earn a MICHELIN Key. It has been Valpas-certified since it opened in 2021, the guest promise in place from the first day.
Guests choose where to stay with safety in mind, more than they say out loud. Bed bugs travel the world in luggage, arriving with anyone at any hotel. They are a phenomenon travellers carry, not a housekeeping failing. Hirvonen's instinct was that assurance on this would matter to the guests RUNO wanted, and the research now bears that instinct out. Phocuswright's 2026 survey of over 1,000 travellers across the U.S., U.K. and France found that pests like bed bugs are the single biggest concern when booking a hotel, ahead of cleanliness and staff. And guests act on it silently, checking reviews and beds long before they ever raise it with a hotel.
Most hotels leave this promise unspoken, because for decades it could not be verified. RUNO chose to go further. It earned Valpas' certification, which equips the room with proprietary technology that verifies a bed bug-safe stay every day. It blends into the room, uses no pesticides, and turns the promise into a bed bug-safe attribute the hotel can show guests, backed by independent verification and updated continuously rather than once a year. That fits a hotel that already measures itself on details others overlook.
RUNO was one of the first hotels to trial a new Valpas feature: showing its bed bug-safe attribute directly on its own booking flow, where guests decide. It also did something few hotels can. It measured the effect. Over an eight-week beta, RUNO showed the attribute to one group of visitors and not to another, then compared how many went on to book. The group that saw it booked direct 12.5% more often than the group that did not. Across the beta that lift was worth around €3,500 in additional direct-booking revenue, close to €1,800 a month, from guests who might otherwise have left the page.
This is the mechanism the whole market is now pointing to. When guests can see verified safety, they choose it, and many are already checking a hotel's reputation before they book. In the same Phocuswright research, 79 to 84% of travellers said they would book an independently certified four-star over an uncertified five-star at the same price, safety ahead of stars. RUNO's booking data shows that preference in action: shown the bed bug-safe attribute, more guests booked. The demand was already there, and showing the attribute let RUNO capture more of it.
For RUNO, the certification is now part of how it keeps its promise to guests, alongside the Michelin Key and the design it is known for. The next step is reach. Nearly half of travellers expect to see safety certification at the booking stage, on hotel websites and OTA listings, and a third would switch booking platforms to find certified hotels. RUNO's bed bug-safe attribute is becoming bookable across travel platforms, and surfacing it in RFPs and tour-operator offers puts the proof in front of the guests, agents and corporate buyers deciding where to book.
As one of the early members of a growing Valpas community, RUNO is living out a shift now measurable across the industry: verified safety is demand hotels can finally see, and book. That community spans 350 certified hotels across 80+ destinations and 25 countries, independently verified by Bureau Veritas and recognised by GSTC and WSHA.
