It brought us Swedish meatballs, Billy bookshelves and endless queues on London's orbital motorway on Saturday afternoons. Now Ikea is going one step further and opening the Ikea Hostel, where customers can stay overnight if they haven't finished their shopping.
Later this month Ikea in Norway will let shoppers nap down in one of its two Oslo warehouses, an operation that will last a week.
"It will be like an alternative hostel. There will be the regular dormitory with lots of beds stacked up together," said Frode Ullebust, a company spokesman.
"We will also have a bridal suite, with a round bed and a hanging chandelier, and the luxury suite, where customers can enjoy breakfast in bed," he said.
Family rooms will also be available for parents and children.
Ullebust said that, as far as he knew, this was Ikea's first foray into the hotel business. Every night, the 30 lucky few will be able to stack up on meatballs, Norwegian salmon and cranberry mousse as Ikea is offering free dinner and breakfast at the usual canteen.
Whereas many Britons may associate the Swedish furniture company with screaming children, traffic jams in the car park and the occasional riot when a new outlet is opened, it seems that Norwegians see a trip to Ikea as the ultimate tourist attraction.
"Around 900,000 visitors come to visit Ikea during the summer holidays. It's more than what one of the biggest attractions in Norway, the Holmenkollen ski jump, gets in one year," Ullebust said.
"We have five Ikea stores in Norway, all situated next to the four biggest cities, which are all in the south in the country. We found that people from the north of Norway include a visit to Ikea as part of their holidays," he said. "The Ikea Hostel will make the destination complete."
Overnight stayers can check in to their temporary abodes from 10pm, an hour before closing time, but will have to be quick in the morning.
"The shop opens at 10am so if they are lazy, people might get woken up by shoppers testing out their mattresses," Ullebust said.
Customers will also be able to take their bedsheets home.
"It's a nice souvenir," he added. "We will also give them bathrobes with the Ikea Hostel logo on, and some slippers, so they won't get cold at night."
And to top it all off, Ikea fans can join a very private tour of the building.
"Ikea never sleeps. They can go on a tour of the warehouse. They will enjoy Ikea by night," said the spokesman.
In addition, four employees will be on hand to look after the Ikea lodgers.
Eager applicants have until Wednesday to apply for an overnight stay, by filling in a form and saying why they want to sleep at Ikea -- a question many a frazzled shopper may wonder about.
In Italy’s storied gold-making hubs, jewelers are reworking their designs to trim gold content as they race to blunt the effect of record prices and appeal to shoppers watching their budgets. Gold prices hit a record high on Thursday, surging near US$5,600 an ounce, more than double a year ago as geopolitical concerns and jitters over trade pushed investors toward the safe-haven asset. The rally is putting undue pressure on small artisans as they face mounting demands from customers, including international brands, to produce cheaper items, from signature pieces to wedding rings, according to interviews with four independent jewelers in Italy’s main
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has talked up the benefits of a weaker yen in a campaign speech, adopting a tone at odds with her finance ministry, which has refused to rule out any options to counter excessive foreign exchange volatility. Takaichi later softened her stance, saying she did not have a preference for the yen’s direction. “People say the weak yen is bad right now, but for export industries, it’s a major opportunity,” Takaichi said on Saturday at a rally for Liberal Democratic Party candidate Daishiro Yamagiwa in Kanagawa Prefecture ahead of a snap election on Sunday. “Whether it’s selling food or
CONCERNS: Tech companies investing in AI businesses that purchase their products have raised questions among investors that they are artificially propping up demand Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday said that the company would be participating in OpenAI’s latest funding round, describing it as potentially “the largest investment we’ve ever made.” “We will invest a great deal of money,” Huang told reporters while visiting Taipei. “I believe in OpenAI. The work that they do is incredible. They’re one of the most consequential companies of our time.” Huang did not say exactly how much Nvidia might contribute, but described the investment as “huge.” “Let Sam announce how much he’s going to raise — it’s for him to decide,” Huang said, referring to OpenAI
Nvidia Corp’s negotiations to invest as much as US$100 billion in OpenAI have broken down, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported, exposing a potential rift between two of the most powerful companies in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The discussions stalled after some inside Nvidia expressed concerns about the transaction, the WSJ reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the deliberations. OpenAI makes the popular chatbot ChatGPT, while Nvidia dominates the market for AI processors that help develop such software. The companies announced the agreement in September last year, saying at the time that they had signed a letter of intent for a strategic
RSS