Hotels Debut As Design Showrooms

If you’re looking for ideas on how to improve your home or commercial property, check out the Vipp Chimney House, the boutique hotel in Copenhagen that was built inside a water pumping station complete with its 115-foot chimney.

The Financial Times (FT) reported the once rough, sterile 650-square-foot environ has been transformed with the best of the Scandinavian good life.

It features high-end furniture, contemporary designs and accents such as throw pillows, giant jars of coarse grains and fresh flowers.

The 118-year-old Chimney House is one of a trio of its hotel showrooms operated by Vipp. The tables, chairs and couches, manufactured by Vipp, are available for purchase, allowing a touch of Danish style home to be brought everywhere. The Danish furniture brand’s premiere product features kitchen units that start at 25,000 euros ($29,491).

Before COVID-19 struck, wealthy home enthusiasts traveled to Denmark to get a sneak peek at the luxury furniture, per FT. Vipp CEO Kasper Egelund told the newspaper hotels are the new “catwalk” for design.

“I think it’s actually the future,” he said.

Once unthinkable, these so-called shoppable hotels have evolved into part of the landscape.

“It’s the super-high-end version of the fact that Ikea does room sets,” Antonia Ward, global director of advisory services at London-based Stylus told the newspaper.

But unlike Ikea with its big box, assemble it yourself, supermarket-like checkout, Vipp offers something different.

It is a way to get shoppers away from their computers and see the brand up close, Ward added.

But depending on your budget, you want to stay elsewhere. The cost of a room starts at 1,000 euros ($1,323).

But reimagining hotels as retail showrooms is not the only way to transform lodging places.

As the coronavirus put the hurt on the hospitality sector, André Balazs, hotelier to the stars like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, is planning to convert them into private clubs.

He is planning to transform the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles to an exclusive, members-only residential club by December, The Wall Street Journal reported.

If the concept works, Balazs said he may convert his Tokyo, Paris and Milan hotels to private clubs as well. He is betting that staying at a club with screened clientele will feel safer to stars than a hotel with any number of strangers coming and going.

“There is something to be said for knowing people,” Balazs told the WSJ. “You can chat with them. You know where they have been.”