Paris will be home to the first Louis Vuitton hotel

• luxury

Over the past 160 years, the French brand Louis Vuitton has expanded from luggage and leather goods, ready-to-wear and accessories to pop-up restaurants and interactive exhibitions. Now the brand is ready to open a luxury hotel.

President and CEO Michael Burke said that the brand's headquarters in Paris will soon be transformed into a giant complex with the world's first Louis Vuitton hotel and the largest LV boutique. With a spectacular view that stretches from the Eiffel Tower to Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louis Vuitton building is located next to the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois church.

Berk says the neighborhood used to be a "no-man's land," but Louis Vuitton's parent company, LVMH Moet Hennessy, has radically transformed it over the past 18 months.

Michael Burke, Louis Vuitton’s chairman said:

“My office is not going to be my office within five years, that’s for sure.

There’s better uses, more contemporary uses for it than a corporate office,” The world's largest luxury conglomerate opened the luxurious new Cheval Blanc hotel, decorated the La Samaritaine department store and presented the new Cova patisserie.

“Parisians are finally rediscovering it. They’ve embraced it. There’s street music now at 11 p.m. outside here. When we took it over, this was a no man’s land, if not worse. Nobody in their right mind would walk here in the night,” Burke told WWD.

The dramatic transformation of the 40,000 square meter headquarters began this week with the launch of a new experiential space called LV Dream. Set to remain open for a year, the 2,000 square meter space features an exhibition of Louis Vuitton collaborations with artists, along with a gift shop, as well as a café and patisserie run by the head pastry chef at Cheval Blanc Paris.

Berk says the event space will "most likely" be converted into the largest Louis Vuitton store, while a hotel is expected to open elsewhere in the building within the next five years. Although the Cheval Blanc is only a two-minute walk away, Burke isn't worried about the future LV Hotel encroaching on his territory: “Ultimately, Vuitton’s largest store, most probably, is going to be where this event is opening,” Burke noted.

“It’s going to be a work in progress for the next 10 years. The exhibition space has a one-year shelf life, and then next year, we’re going to do something else. And ultimately, probably the majority of this 400,000-square-foot building is going to be something else than an office”.