Kings of flat-pack furniture, IKEA, are planning to open boutique style low cost hotel accommodation
16 August 2012
IKEA, famous for supplying stylish flat-pack furniture, are planning to build 100 budget design hotels across Europe.
The super successful Swedish company aims to create budget properties that have a boutique feel but at affordable prices. They believe that this is the fastest growing sector in the hotel industry. The budget design model is already successfully used by Chic and Basic brand in Madrid and Motel One which has 39 hotels in Germany.
The hotels will not use the IKEA branding nor will it be run by the company but by an established hotel operator. Hotels will crop up in the UK, Netherlands, Poland and Germany.
Harald Müller, a spokesperson for Inter IKEA’s property division, told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper: "We will announce within a few weeks the first location for our budget hotel in Germany and we are in talks with hotel operators to rapidly implement our concept."
This is not IKEA's first time dabbling in the lodging market. According to The Guardian newspaper, in 2007 the company opened an IKEA hostel so that customers could sleep over if they hadn't finished shopping. For one week, customers were able to spend the night in one of two Oslo Ikea warehouses for free.
Earlier this year, IKEA erected a temporary lounge in Paris Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport so that travellers could rest between flights (see video below).
No one knows yet whether or not, their famous Swedish meatballs will be served in their hotel restaurants.