Bed and breakfast at Ikea

Oslo - The hotel's bridal suit is free, but guests be warned! Oversleep, and you're likely to find yourself surrounded by several hundred shoppers checking out the bed linen and prodding the mattress.

Welcome to "Hostel Ikea" -- a startling if very temporary foray by the Swedish furniture giant into the hospitality sector.

All this week, the Ikea warehouse in the Norwegian capital Oslo is offering sleepovers in its showrooms, free of charge.

Choices include a bridal suite, complete with hanging chandelier and a round bed, and a luxury suite that includes breakfast in bed.

Other guests can opt for the "dormitory" which, while lacking the relative privacy and opulence of suites, has the advantage of allowing guests to choose their mattresses from the wide selection carried by the warehouse.

With their wedding just a few days away and their savings exhausted, Alexander Augst, 28, and his fiance Angelica Brockme, 23, managed to score a night in the bridal suite on Tuesday.

"We're getting married on Saturday and spent all our money on the wedding. We have nothing left for a hotel and a honeymoon, so we thought it would be fun to sleep at Ikea instead," Brockme said.

Fun maybe, but not overly romantic. Guests are advised to bring eye masks and earplugs as the overhead lights remain on, though dimmed, throughout the night, and Ikea staff start moving palettes laden with goods between the beds from 4:00am.

"The lights, the noise ... I think this is a once-only experience," was Augst's bleary-eyed judgement the next day.

One Norwegian family saw the event as an original way to round off the summer break. "Our three kids spotted the offer on the internet. We were going to spend our holidays around Oslo and thought staying at Ikea would be a fun thing to do as a family," said mother-of-three Vanya Olsen, 35, in a bedroom with fake en-suite bathroom.

"It's cool that we're sleeping in a shop," said 12-year-old Emmely as her little sister Emilie, 9, ran around excitedly around the showroom.

"It's cheap, it's different and we can shop before going home. I quite like that table in our room. Maybe I am going to buy it tomorrow," added their mother.

At 10:00pm, an hour before closing time, guests were welcomed by a bell-boy in red uniform as two chambermaids in black dresses and white aprons readied the mattresses. Bedsheets, bathrobes and slippers were also provided.

A free dinner of prawn sandwiches was served at 11:00pm before an employee read a bedtime story, which told the tale of a little girl who gets locked up in .... Ikea.

After a comfortable if brief night's sleep, the early wake-up time allowed guests, clad in bathrobes and slippers, to tour the inner workings of the warehouse as staff busied themselves restocking shelves.

That was followed by a breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and cold cuts in the store's kitchen department, before the store opened again to the public.

Of the 1,200 people applied for the chance to stay at the Ikea Hostel, only 150 were selected.

Olsen and her family certainly appeared to have enjoyed their stay. "It was better than a hotel. I would do it again," said the paramedic.

"Or maybe we could do it if the event happens at the Ikea where we usually shop in Sweden. Now that would be really surreal."-- AFP

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