Hotel Zed and Accent Inns CEO is Canadian woman entrepreneur of the year

At Accent Inns you can use the phone in the room to dial 1 for the front desk, 2 to connect to another room or 3 to report paranormal activity to Ghostbusters.

"There are hidden jokes everywhere in our rooms," says Accent Inns and Hotel Zed CEO Mandy Farmer.

"You'll also find them on the key card, the pen, that card that asks if you forgot something and the shampoo dispenser. It sounds like a small thing, but it's actually big. If we can have pops of humour and a sense of fun throughout the hotels then we can put smiles on guests' faces and that's what it's all about."

You'll also find a rubber ducky in every bathtub in Accent Inns, because, after all, the hotel chain "gives a duck."

There are Accent Inns in Kelowna, Kamloops, Burnaby, Vancouver Airport and Victoria.

Hotel Zed has groovy, funky, retro hotels in Kelowna, Victoria and Tofino.

Hotel Zed is the place you'll find psychedelic decor, typewriters, rotary dial phones, a hippie VW van parked out front and a 'nooner' package.

Farmer's leadership in curating such distinctive hotels where people want to stay led to the CEO winning the 2020 Royal Bank Canadian Women Entrepreneur Excellence Award.

The excellence award is the marquee of seven categories, essentially making it the Canadian woman entrepreneur of the year accolade and the top honour in the nation for a businesswoman.

But the award is about more than just fun and games.

Judges dug deep and scrutinized revenues, profitability, company culture and customer satisfaction.

While COVID has certainly put a spanner in the works this year, previously Accent Inns and Hotel Zed had doubled profits over five years with a 52% increase in revenues.

Even in these pandemic times, a hotel employee survey showed that 97% of workers were happy coming to work and felt supported.

During the worst of COVID, hotel occupancy plunged to 20% and some staff had to be laid off.

But Farmer made sure health benefits for laid-off workers continued and all staff received $250 gift certificates for groceries.

Accent Inns also partnered with the United Way to create the Hotels for Frontline Workers Fund so rooms could be offered free to essential workers who can't go home.

The chain also works with the BC Cancer Agency to provide rooms for out-of-town patients undergoing five-week rounds of chemotherapy.

"We lose money doing this, but it's the right thing to do," says Farmer.

Farmer started leading Accent Inns in 2008 and founded Hotel Zed in 2014.

Farmer's dad, Terry, established the first Accent Inn in 1986 in Victoria.

"Honestly, this being a family business gave me a huge leg up," says the younger Farmer.

"But I've continued to run the chains with the deep family values it started with and I founded the Hotel Zed chain. So, I think the Canadian Women Entrepreneur Awards recognized that."

With a COVID vaccine on the way, Farmer expects leisure travel and hotel occupancy to surge quickly because everyone is dying to travel again.

However, she suspects business travel may be forever changed now that companies are comfortable with virtual meetings and the cost savings that comes along with it.

"But hotels are a resilient industry and British Columbia is beautiful, so we'll recover," says Farmer.

"I'm already looking at other cities for both Accent Inns and Hotel Zed."