MISSION VIEJO : Shoppers’ Suite Offers Sweet Break

You’re in the middle of long day of holiday shopping, your feet aching from walking what seems like miles from store to store. You’d like nothing better than a soft sofa, a cup of hot coffee and maybe a soap opera or sports event to watch to take your mind off your maxed-out credit cards.

Anyone who has trudged through the mad crush of a sprawling mall is well familiar with the feeling that shopping is more work than recreation. But the Mission Viejo Mall is determined to change that feeling and pamper its harried customers.

For the first time this Christmas season, the 12-year-old mall has cleared out a former store and opened a free hospitality suite for shoppers.

It’s an idea unique to Mission Viejo Mall. The shoppers’ suite is the first of its kind in a county mall, according to Mission Viejo Mall managers.

The suite, which opens this weekend, is designed to give customers a break from the hustle and bustle that invariably comes with Christmas shopping, say mall officials. Hostesses will be available to pour hot coffee and offer snacks donated from mall shops such as cheese and cookies. All of the amenities are free.

“It seemed like a natural extension to the community, to help out our customers and also the tenants,” said Connie Wilson, general manager of the mall. “For the customers, it’s an opportunity to come in and recoup. For the tenants of the mall, it’s an opportunity to let customers sample their products.”

Perhaps the most popular amenity will be one designed after hospitality suites in hotels. The mall lounge will offer a package-check area where, like hotel guests who need to store their luggage, mall customers can drop off their packages and not have to drag them around the mall while they shop, said Heidi Goeman, a mall spokeswoman.

“We believe that’s an opportunity people will take advantage of,” Goeman said. “Who likes to lug those heavy packages around?”

The suite’s hostesses will come from the brigade that staffs the mall’s hospitality booth, which rents out strollers and sells gift certificates, among other services. There, they have been tested by the questions most shoppers will ask, said Nadine Green, a hostess from Lake Forest.

The suite is on the bottom floor next to Bullock’s. It will operate during normal mall hours, which are, with occasional changes, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. during the Christmas season.