Fancy sleeping in a furniture store?
A quick Google search of this phrase will bring up an amusing gallery of images by photographer Kevin Frayer, who visited an Ikea store in Beijing and snapped dozens of customers happily napping on sofas and beds. The Chinese love to sleep in Ikea, apparently, and the home furnishing chain encourages the try-before-you-buy option to great success, making China Ikea's fastest growing market.
Imagine if they could officially check into that Ikea store and enjoy all the facilities of a hotel – room service, concierge, housekeeping – and check out the next morning having placed an order for the Arvika swivel chair they especially liked that night.
Sadly, Ikea doesn't have a hotel quite like this, although there's an Ikea Hotel at Almhult, Sweden, across from the store, where weary shoppers can spend the night before attempting another marathon the next day. The hotel doesn't feature Ikea furniture but does serve the chain's famous Swedish meatballs.
Ikea has also launched a brand partnership with Marriott Hotels for a collection of budget hotels aimed at Millennials called Moxy. None of these hotels will feature Ikea furniture either. The company admits – and this is not surprising to anyone who owns an Ikea bookshelf – that its flat-pack furniture is not hardy enough to withstand the punishment dealt out by average hotel guests. But perhaps they will have Allen keys to open the doors?
Never fear, though, you still will be able to sleep in a furniture store, if that's your desire. In the US, two upscale home decor brands with retail outlets, West Elm, which has more than 90 stores internationally, and Restoration Hardware, which specialises in historically-sourced design, are set to open a number of mid to luxury hotels, starting in 2018.
Brooklyn-based West Elm, in partnership with hospitality company DDK, is rolling out mid-priced hotels in five cities where the retail chain doesn't have stores, hoping to extend brand awareness. It won't be so vulgar that the furnishings have price tags on them but guests will be able to purchase any cushion or table that takes their fancy through an app downloaded at check in.
Because of an existing relationship with furniture makers, West Elm can stylishly fit out a property for less cost than is usual in the hotel game and offer rooms from a reasonable $US175 a night.
Restoration Hardware's first hotel at 55 Gansevoort Street in New York's pricey Meatpacking District will be more upscale. It will offer 14 rooms, a restaurant and a showroom space, blurring the lines between hospitality, home decoration and retail. Despite the "hardware" in the brand name, don't expect this hotel to be cheap.
The hotel-as-lifestyle-retail-opportunity is one of the latest trends in hospitality but the practice of retail brands opening hotels is not new. Ferragamo, Fendi, Bulgari, Versace, Armani, Baccarat, and Karl Lagerfeld, who is opening his first hotel in Macau in 2018, are high-end fashion brands that have successfully sought to extend their customer loyalty into the hospitality industry.
Shopping the room is not exactly new either. Many hotel chains already make it possible for guests to order a mattress that has given them a particularly good night's sleep or sets of high quality hotel linen, for instance.
Starwood's Aloft lifestyle hotel brand collaborated with Design Within Reach, a store that sells reproductions of modernist furniture, so that guests could purchase some of the room furnishings. DWR catalogues are not-so discreetly placed in rooms, offering everything from chandeliers to bench seats.
The large chain hotels have become savvy these days and opened their own online stores – ShopMarriott, HiltonToHome, Hyatt at Home and swissotelathome, to mention a few, allow guests (and non-guests) to bring hotel style home. The old hotel gift shop is sadly outdated.
What's new is the immersive retail experience that's proudly fudging the categories of hospitality and retail. But it's one thing providing stylish bed coverings and elegant chairs – it's not going to mean much if the room service is sloppy or the housekeeping slack. Restoration Hardware has strong brand loyalty for its simple aesthetics and classic design but I'm not sure every potential guest would be attracted to a hotel with "hardware" in its name.
There's probably an opportunity here for Bunnings. I know people who spend so much time in those stores they go missing for days. How wonderful if they could bed down there at closing time and start again in the morning.
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