75th Anniversary: Hotel lobby invites guests to play

By Peter Budig

Hotels around the world are usually well organised and run efficiently. Yet they are a microcosm of life, with all its diversity and colour. Surprises are never far away. While guests eat, drink, indulge, sleep, love, celebrate and – above all – dream, staff work hard behind the scenes. In this world, there is one prevailing law: the guest is always the most important person. This is precisely why guests in Nuremberg's hotels have recently been encouraged to play to their heart's content: puzzling, scrabbling, playing cards and rolling marbles.

It began with a puzzle during Spielwarenmesse

Ralph Meyer, a hotelier from Nuremberg who has conquered the world professionally from Franconia and has been back in his hometown since 2018, keeps a close eye on his establishment, the NH Collection Nürnberg City. His desk, complete with laptop, is located in a niche in the foyer, enabling him to work while participating in hotel life. “After all, I’m not an office clerk; I’m a hotelier,” he explains. At some point, the impulse came with a Nuremberg puzzle: “We wanted our foyer to have the comfort of a living room. So, my team came up with the idea of introducing games. We wanted to offer an additional ‘playful’ service and, of course, create new incentives for the quality of stay,” he recalls. Initially, his team laid out a puzzle of Nuremberg’s Dürer House during the Spielwarenmesse 2022. ‘At first, there was just one guest, then several. Soon, groups formed and worked together on the large puzzle. People got to know each other informally. That’s exactly what we hoped for, because it makes the stay unforgettable.”

Play zones invite guests to linger in the stylish foyer

Over time, the foyer, which houses the bar, breakfast room, meeting tables, and work spaces for hotel guests, has become home to play zones. Life-sized Playmobil figures dressed as waiters point the way. Games are laid out at elegant standing tables or the expansive wooden table. Anyone can simply drop by, find partners to play with and enjoy themselves, but they should remember not to lose track of time.

At the NH Collection you can experience the world of large-scale hotels in miniature

Meyer wanted to create an exhibition about hotel life to be combined with an event. She approached Dr Karin Falkenberg, who was then the director of the Nuremberg Toy Museum. As an experienced museum director, she specialises in public-oriented exhibitions. In collaboration with Berlin artist Anna Heidenhain, a hotel doll landscape was created. Here, life is industrious, cosy, chaotic, hearty, sexy, or even criminal, depending on the room and situation. Sometimes the focus is on the hotel as a workplace and at other times on the varied lives of the guests. Since January 2025, the individual scenes from hotel life have been on display behind glass in the foyer as a hotel doll's house.
To the exhibition catalogue Hotel Stories by Karin Falkenberg and Anna Heidenhain

This was all to be made public before the Spielwarenmesse 2025. This plan also succeeded: 'We invited 40 people to the exhibition opening, but 140 came in the end,' says Ralph Meyer, who naturally treated his guests to an exceptional buffet and drinks. The hotel has since become a miniature centre of Nuremberg's toy city. One of the foyer walls is adorned with a huge, colourful painting by renowned artist Birgit Osten entitled 'Toy City Nuremberg'. Pictures of toys also adorn the hotel rooms.

A successful example sets a trend. More hotels in Nuremberg have set up play zones

News of the success of the games initiative has spread. Other Nuremberg hotels, including the Living Hotel, Le Méridien Grand Hotel, Das Steichele, Novotel Nürnberg Messezentrum, Arvena Park Hotel, Hotel Victoria and Best Western Nürnberg am Hauptbahnhof, have launched similar initiatives. Toy manufacturers support the play hotels by sponsoring them with donations of games. The campaign is actively promoted via displays at the gaming tables, notices at reception, and by the hotel staff. All guests are welcome to join in. Classic board games have been chosen to ensure that as many guests as possible can easily join in. In the evenings, guests therefore gather informally to play games such as UNO, No Mercy, Phase 10, Flip, Wiped Out, If You Were..., Collector's Memory, Most Beautiful Destinations and The Crazy Labyrinth. People naturally talk about it at home, thus spreading the image of Nuremberg as the toy city around the world.

Play & Connect 2026

These hotels all invite their guests to play in the lobby:
Arvena Park Hotel, Görlitzer Straße 51, 90473 Nürnberg
Best Western Hotel Nürnberg Am Hauptbahnhof, Allersberger Strasse 34, 90461 Nürnberg,
Das Steichele, Knorrstraße 2-8, 90402 Nürnberg
Hotel Victoria, Königstraße 80, 90402 Nürnberg
Living Hotel Nürnberg, Obere Kanalstr. 11, 90429 Nürnberg,
Le Meridien Grand Hotel, Bahnhofstrasse 1-3, 90402 Nürnberg
NH Collection Nürnberg City, Bahnhofstrasse 17-19, 90402 Nürnberg
Novotel Nürnberg Messezentrum, Münchener Strasse 340, 90471 Nürnberg

Special thanks to the sponsors of the games
Mattel Inc. and Ravensburger Gruppe 

About the author
Peter Budig  studied Protestant theology, history and political science. He worked as a freelance journalist, headed up the editorial department of a large advertising paper in Nuremberg for ten years and was the editor of Nuremberg’s Abendzeitung newspaper. He has been freelancing again since 2014 as a journalist, book author and copywriter. Storytelling is absolutely his favourite form.