Ikea has been hugely successful discount furniture chain. I go to Ikea few times a year to eat at their food court the Swedish meatballs and to visit the small Scandinavian food selection to pick up some knäckebröd or näkkileipä as we call this bread in Finland.
Now, Ikea is pushing into budget designer hotels and planning to open 100 locations in Europe in the next few years according to the Financial Times. They are looking for an established hotel operator to manage the chain for them. These hotels would neither carry the Ikea name nor furniture, but would rather be a financial real estate investment for them.
It is interesting to see how this is going to develop. The only discount “designer” hotel chain that comes to my mind is the Starwood’s Aloft, which is the “vision of W hotels” according to their branding.
