In a statement, Nordic Choice Hotels, which operates some 200 hotels in Nordic and Baltic countries, said its existing PCs had been converted to Google's CloudReady platform which included Chrome OS.

The hotel chain said it had been hit by ransomware in December which had made all its PCs unusable.

But since guests were both coming and going, the company decided on what it described as an agile approach and switched one of its properties to Chrome OS in less than 24 hours.

Kari Anna Fiskvik, vice-president Technology at Nordic Choice Hotels, said: :We already had an ongoing pilot project initiated by one of our co-workers who came up with the proposal to convert our existing Windows PCs to CloudReady.

"We wanted to upgrade a large part of our computer fleet, but by converting them we could save both cost and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as increase the security level in the company.

"So when we suddenly had to deal with the cyber attack, the decision to go all in and fast-track the project was made in seconds."

The statement said this had enabled the company to recover from the ransomware attack much quicker than if it had reinstalled Windows.

"Put simply, we cleaned all the computers and installed Google’s CloudReady instead," said Fiskvik.

"Both from when the project started last spring, but especially during the cyber attack, we’ve received enormous help from Google and their Norwegian partner Devoteam, ensuring we easily and efficiently could make the switch as quickly as possible and get our hotels back online when we were attacked."