A TOUCH OF TIME TRAVEL IN YOUR ROOM
New Victoria hotel digs more modern than retro
With an original 1967 VW bus for a free shuttle and mid-century rotary dial phones alongside high-tech hubs, this mid-priced experience brings back the years yet flings you into the future, all for fun.
VICTORIA, BC – Stylish Mayfair Mall on Douglas Street will have some stiff competition in the cool factor,
right across the street, when Hotel Zed officially throws open its doors on Thursday, May 1st and revs up its revamped 1967 Volkswagen Bus to shuttle guests around town for free. The hotel’s opening signifies the almost-complete transformation of the former economy-level and basic blue-and-white Blue Ridge Inn into the mid-priced, mid-century-savvy and colourful Hotel Zed.
“We’re too excited to share Zed to wait to finish to a tee,” says owner Mandy Farmer, one of BC’s best-known hoteliers for her family business, Accent Inns. “Zed has a lot more leeway and rebellious fun, starting with the mega-watt colour palette in the rooms and all over the property. The painters told us drivers stopped every 20 minutes to say thanks for brightening the ‘hood and their day!”
Farmer’s entrepreneurial vision has resulted in seeing through not only a preservation of mid-century architecture – one of her many passions – but also an opportunity to create, almost from scratch, a retro-modern-and-back-to-retro accommodation experience, if there ever was one. This property takes all the fun
of the last century’s gadgets, brings them up-to-date and into utility in engaging ways, yet maintains a firm future-forward grip on reality by offering 21st-century technology in the rooms and the ultra-interactive lobby.
The 62-room hotel was re-designed by Farmer, her staff and Kimberly Williams Design, a Brentwood Bay-based firm. While the rooms were being deconstructed, unordinary ideas sprung from Zed staff – many of them long-term employees – such as comic books in bathrooms, high-tech media hubs, refurbished Tanker steel desks, and working vintage dial phones that come with QR-code instructions in the rooms. The stand-alone lobby screamed out for a vinyl-record listening station, a Ping Pong Lounge, typewriters to whip up postage-paid Hotel Zed postcards, free wi-fi and Wii games. Rent-free, vintage-style bikes to get you to downtown or nearby Galloping Goose Trail, a favourite cyclist and pedestrian route amongst locals.
While guests can already get a bed at Zed, Farmer expects the final touches to the hot tub, waterslide and extensive indoor and outdoor poolside patios, as well as final finishes to the lobby, to be completed by June 1st. A hotly-anticipated addition to the heart of the lobby is the restaurant partner, to be announced soon.
What will be immediately served up for sure is Farmer’s signature style of award-winning teamwork and customer service. Zed goes even further, promising indelible interaction amongst guests by serving up coffee
in the ground-zero lobby, instead of the standard offering of an in-room coffee machine. But, “our free coffee is totally awesome!” quips Farmer, who couldn’t be happier that a decade’s worth of percolating this property prototype is finally reaching fruition.
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ABOUT HOTEL ZED
We’re a ridiculously fun and eclectic hotel in Victoria, BC, Canada that is so awesome your mind will be blown. We’ve got bold colors, retro-style and modern technology. Plus, typewriters, record players, comic books, ping pong lounge and the coolest ’67 VW shuttle bus. Our laid-back lobby lets you make friends with others or your own inner Zed. We are rebels against the ordinary! Doors thrown open in 2014 by Mandy Farmer, one of Profit’s Top100 Canadian Women Entrepreneurs, aka President/CEO of Accent Inns – Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce’s 2014 Employer-of-the-Year, BC Business Magazine’s 5th Best Company To Work For in 2011.
MEDIA CONTACT
Sheri Wisnowski, secretweapon.pr / Vancouver, BC, Canada
text or call 604.728.6160 / secretweapon.pr@gmail.com
John Espley, Director of Marketing & Communications, Hotel Zed & Accent Inns / Victoria, BC, Canada
text or call 250.213.9605 / jespley@accentinns.com
getabed@hotelzed.com
EDITORS/PRODUCERS
- Media kit available upon request
-The Why of Zed
-Zeitgeist of Zed
-Style & Design
-Rooms
-Amenities
-‘Hood
-Top 10 Activities
-People
- Interviews with CEO Mandy Farmer available by phone or skype
VISUAL EDITORS
- Included – image of the transformed property w/CEO Mandy Farmer and refurbished 1967 Zed Bus
- More internal and external image options available
