Furniture retailer Ikea is looking to open a budget ‘design’ hotel chain across Europe. The hotels, believed to be at least 100, will not use the Ikea name and will not be run by the Swedish company but by an established hotel operator.
Budget design hotels, with boutique style at lower prices, is one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry. Munich-based Motel One, which is a similar concept, is also looking to expand into Europe with a hotel planned for Edinburgh.
Inter Ikea plans to build the hotels in established markets such as the UK, Netherlands and Poland as well as new markets such as Germany. “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,” Harald Müller, a senior manager in Inter Ikea’s property division, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany.
