Cool Hotels Surfacing in Edmonton, Alberta
Chris · October 16, 2007
On a recent trip to Edmonton to visit my brother, the last thing I expected to be doing was touring the local hotel scene.
Edmonton is a gritty Northern Canadian city not traditionally associated with ‘funky’ hotels...or at least that’s what I thought. Thanks to my brother, I discovered some new hotels that are re-defining the hotel experience in Edmonton.
The venerable Fairmont Hotel Macdonald, the Westin Hotel and the Sutton Place offer guests to Alberta’s capitol city ample luxury hotel choices, but there has long been a huge gap between the big brands downtown, and the budget hotels in suburbia.
Locally based Westcorp Properties has developed a number of boutique hotels on the Prairies, such as the contemporary Metterra Hotel in the eclectic Old Strathcona neighbourhood in Edmonton. This hotel brings a new level of design and vibrance to the local hotel market.
The front desk organized a quick tour the Metterra for me, and I snapped a series of images of the upscale property:
Westcorp’s newest hotel project is the Matrix Hotel located downtown. This 180 room hotel is a complete renovation of the former “Inn on 7th”, and the new look is clean, contemporary and cool.
Matrix Hotel Opens This Thursday
When I visited the hotel to see how construction was coming along, I found out from a job site supervisor that the Matrix Hotel is soft-opening four floors of guestrooms this Thursday October 18th to a select group. About 60 sixty guestrooms will be available for the first time this week, with the balance of the rooms opening before the end of 2007.
Construction was in full swing on a Sunday afternoon preparing for the opening. While taking pictures of the hotel perimeter, my photographic activity inspired some suspicion from the workers inside and I was approached about my intentions. Explaining that I was a hotel industry blogger hardly clarified things, yet I was still kindly escorted for a quick tour of the lobby and some public areas.
With only four days until opening, there seemed to be much work left to do, but the finished lobby design elements were really well put together. A large, open lobby with lots of natural light and tall glass windows surrounding the lobby bar (with electric fireplace) delivers a bright sense of arrival. The lively public areas were designed with steel textures and glass with rich colour accents.
Guestrooms are going to be high-tech, with the same contemporary clean steel look of the public areas, with bright colours in linens, bedding and guestroom accents providing some balance. The top floors of the hotel will house an upgraded room category, and a suite on the third floor will open onto a huge patio complete with BBQ.
A quick search on Tripadvisor showed a single comment about the former Inn at 7th, titled: ”Absolutely Horribly Managed”.
Previous hotel management seems to have left the door wide open for a quick improvement!
Check out some pictures of Edmonton’s Matrix Hotel:
Congratulations to these two hotels for raising the design-bar in Edmonton!
