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Kelowna’s Hotel Zed turns rooms into work-from-home spaces

Hotel Zed is charging a rate of $60 a day for one-week increments
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The Hotel Zed location in Victoria can be recognized by its bright colours. (Contributed)

Kelowna’s Hotel Zed is stepping up to assist those professionals who are looking to escape to an office space during COVID-19.

Over the last few weeks, Hotel Zed has identified some challenges with working from home. Toddlers tend to wander in and out of video conferences, everyone’s backs are sore from makeshift workstations, and home WiFi set-ups were proving to be frustratingly inconsistent.

Hotel Zed’s VP Operations, Don Fennerty, has said that working from his dining room table with two teens, his wife and the dogs home is incredibly distracting. It’s cramped quarters and it’s not a productive experience.

Hotel Zed quickly realized – “We can’t be alone here, right?”

“We’re all self-isolating for the greater good of our community, which means that coffee shops, coworking spaces and cramped offices are rightly shut down,” said Kelsey Millman, account manager, Hotel Zed. “There aren’t really any options.”

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In turn, Hotel Zed has turned their rooms into self-contained workspaces. The rooms are equipped with free WiFi, functional desks and chairs, coffee & tea, and your own contained bathroom.

“Like everyone else, we had to move quickly to shut down our head office and move to working from home,” said Mandy Farmer, president and CEO of Accent Inns and Hotel Zed.

“After a week or so, we saw some of our own colleagues were struggling. Some were working from the kitchen table in uncomfortable chairs with kids coming and going, calls getting interrupted and WiFi dropping out on them. It was driving some our staff crazy. That’s when we had the idea to turn our funky Hotel Zed rooms into safe, self-contained working spaces for those who need it.”

Hotel Zed is charging a rate of $60/day for one-week increments. The rooms are cleaned on the weekends so there is limited exposure.

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Daniel Taylor
Reporter, Kelowna Capital News
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