Commissioned by Efteling and unveiled on 1 August 2025, the Efteling Grand Hotel marks a milestone as the park’s first hotel built within its boundaries, offering guests incredible views of the Fairytale Forest, the Aquanura fountain show, or the Pardoes Promenade from one of 140 lavishly appointed rooms and suites spread over seven floors, altogether accommodating 644 beds.
Drawing on the visual beauty of The Grand Budapest Hotel in palette and proportion, Heinzel De Vries composed interiors where velvet‑wrapped seating, gleaming marble floors, and burnished brass fittings interact with sinuous lines and bespoke furniture in an orchestration that evokes cinematic elegance and the story‑laden charm of Efteling’s seventy‑plus‑year heritage.
Every gallery, communal lounge, and hallway has been conceived as part of a continuous narrative, inviting guests not just to rest, dine, or shop but to live inside a fairytale, with curves and colours, scaled furniture and concealed references to Beloved Rides guiding them through an unfolding interior journey that feels surprising and comfortingly familiar.
“Designing the Efteling Grand Hotel was an exceptional multi-year journey in which we translated Efteling’s immersive storytelling, through close collaboration with Efteling’s design team, into a tangible and layered interior experience. This project highlights the transformative power of narrative-driven design.” – Tinka Heinzel and Barbara de Vries.
While materials such as panelled walnut, glowing terrazzo, and softly burnished brass convey elegance, furniture choices embed surprise. Original Verner Panton Cloverleaf and Arne Jacobsen’s Mayor sofas float beside custom pieces shaped like stylised bird wings, rabbit ears, or blossom petals. The low upholstered curves invite intimacy, whispering of tales that unfold around each corner.
Every room frame is oriented for park views, yet each maintains a distinct identity: deeper hues for forest vistas, softer scales for promenade perspectives. The lobby welcomes with carved arches and mirrored columns while a fragrant signature scent lingers. At Brasserie 7, deep reds resonate in plush booths and rich carpets, while Restaurant‑Bar Mystique’s soothing palette allows the fading light from Aquanura to become part of the scenery.
Heinzel De Vries collaborated closely with Efteling’s in‑house design team, led by Sander de Bruijn, the park’s Design & Experience lead. De Bruijn drew inspiration from the smallest detail, the Golden Goose animatronic, to guide material contrasts, arch proportions, and even signage curves in the new hotel language.
This hotel brought a new vision of a fairytale resort. Efteling opened its original Fairytale Forest in 1952 under the auspices of its Nature Park Foundation. Profits from ticket sales and the resort are reinvested into the park’s creative future. In 2023, it welcomed 5.56 million visitors, its highest attendance ever, thanks in no small part to new offerings like this Grand Hotel.
In a gesture befitting the park’s theatrical spirit, a giant bow measuring 16.74 metres wide and 17.15 metres high was draped across the façade upon opening, breaking the Guinness World Record for the Largest Ribbon Bow.
This Grand Hotel is the living continuum of the park’s decades-long story. In its colour, material, furniture, and scent, it captures the enchantment of a storybook while affirming the pragmatics of hospitality. Rooms do double duty as stages, restaurants as theatrical sets, hallways as hidden trails. The result is a space that feels familiar and fantastical at once.
Photography: Chantal Arnts
