Hide-And-Seek Banned in IKEA Dutch Stores

Furniture major IKEA has banned people from playing hide-and-seek in its Dutch stores. Sky News has reported that the chain has banned the children's game, after thousands of people got engaged in it last year in Belgium.

According to one of the event's organizers, Elise De Rijck, people many a times were hiding in fridges, under stuffed toys and blue IKEA bags, and in the storage spaces under beds. Rijck added that no doubt it was really exhausting, but at the same time was so much fun.

In the meantime, IKEA was less enthusiastic. Martina Smedberg, IKEA Group spokeswoman, told reporters, "We need to make sure people are safe in our stores and that's hard to do if we don't even know where they are".

IKEA has stopped thousands of people from playing hide-and-seek in its maze-like stores in the Netherlands.

A spirited round of the children's game has attracted more than hundreds of people to a Belgian IKEA outlet in previous summer, due to which the world's biggest furniture retailer, has prohibited similar events in many of its Dutch stores, mentioning the safety issues.

The organizers of the games have started looking for alternative locations now and have got word out over Facebook.

Martina Smedberg, IKEA Group spokesperson, said that it is very hard for them to control huge rush during events and that they need to make sure that people are safe in their stores especially when they don't even know where people are.

The company has 13 Dutch stores and more than 32,000 people have signed up via Facebook to play hide-and-seek at IKEA's Eindhoven store, with 19,000 registrations from Amsterdam and 12,000 from Utrecht.

IKEA, in July, had granted consent for one game of hide-and-seek in its store in Wilrijk, Belgium, when a 29-year-old Elise De Rijck put it on her list of 30 things to do before her 30th birthday.