IKEA plans to expand its business segment and build a hundred affordable boutique hotels across Europe. 

Photo: IKEA in Lomme, next Lille, France, Getty Images

The company that once built an apartment in Parisian metro now seeks to satisfy thousands of budget travelers «in markets where it is already active in property, such as the UK, Netherlands, and Poland, as well as new markets such as Germany,» and the first locations are to open in 2014, says Financial Times. Additionally, the company is intended to build student residences for colleges and universities across Europe.

The hotels will not use the name of IKEA as its hostel built in Norway in 2007, which was a place where shoppers could sleep overnight if they weren’t time to finish buying IKEA products.

The details of the new project are not disclosed yet but it’s known that the hotels will feature budget furniture but are expected to be designed as exclusive boutiques. The hotels will not be run by the retailer but by an experienced hotel operator.

«We will announce within a few weeks the first location for our budget hotel in Germany and we are in talks with hotel operators to rapidly implement our concept,» Harald Müller, a senior manager in Inter Ikea’s property division, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany.