Home Depot is partnering with a short-term rental platform so that when people are on vacation at one particular location, they’ll see what a trip or two to the retailer can do for them when they get home.
Most everything, from the paint on the walls on down, at a new 4,000 square foot vacation rental home in Massachusetts is available for purchase from Home Depot, according to an article on People. The location, available to rent via Vrbo, was renovated by Home Depot using décor and furnishings from the home improvement chain in consultation with a number of popular home decorating influencers.
Home Depot is not the only retailer or brand trying to get its products out in front of vacationers. HomeGoods recently launched an initiative offering customers a chance to stay at a two-bedroom home for one of four weekends at $29.99 per night. Each weekend is slated to show off a different kind of unique décor that visitors can shop via the House of HomeGoods microsite. Visitors can also bring home some of their favorite products.
And RH recently opened up its own ultra-luxury hotel in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, according to Travel + Leisure. Rooms cost between $3,500 and $7,500.
Not all attempts at integrating brands into hospitality experiences have succeeded. West Elm’s planned shoppable boutique hotels announced in 2016, for instance, never got off the ground.
Home Depot’s new brand-building experiment comes as the chain appears to be bouncing back from a 2021 dip, which followed a massive boom in business brought on by the pandemic.
Nationwide lockdowns beginning in March of 2020 led to a spike in DIY home improvement projects, boosting purchases at Home Depot and its major competitor Lowe’s. In 2021, however, Home Depot began running up against headwinds as fewer people initiated DIY home projects and the housing market softened.
The chain released its Q2 quarterly results for 2022 in August, and reported a 6.5 percent year-over-year sales increase. This represented the highest quarterly sales in the company’s history.
