IKEA hotels! I'm in!

Love this courtesy of Budget Travel...if there hotel rooms are half as awesome as their stores, I'm in!!

IKEA Will Build 100 Budget Hotels in Europe

Posted by: Sean O'Neill, Wednesday, Aug 15, 12:54 PM
Filed Under: affordable europe, Europe, hotels, hotels & lodging, hotels and lodging

IKEA's summer pop-up lounge at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport (CourtesyIKEA)

Everyone's favorite affordable furniture store, IKEA, will build a budget hotel chain across Europe. The first one will be in Germany, in 2014.

Surprisingly, the 100 hotels in Germany, Austria, Britain, Holland, and Poland won't feature the company's famous flat-pack furniture—or even its brand name, according to a scoop in the Financial Times. Though fans hope that Swedish meatballs will still be served in any hotel restaurants.

IKEA aims to cash in on the booming trend in "budget designer hotels," as represented in Europe by Motel One, citizenM, Chic and Basic,Leonardo Hotels, and B&B Hotels.

It's great news that budget hotels are finally getting their day in the sun. The much stronger dollar against the euro also means that Europe is becoming a good value again.

Let's just hope guests at the IKEA's hotel chain won't have to assemble the beds and dressers ourselves. Or that the instructions for finding your room won't be as confusing as Ikea's diagrams for building furniture.

In 2007, Ikea Norway created a pop-up Ikea Hostel. Earlier this year, Ikea created a pop-up lounge in Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport (Terminal 3).

But on a more serious note, if IKEA did go ahead and build a hotel that was just like its stores, would you stay in it if the price were right?