Fred Hotels Zürich
About Fred Hotels Zürich
Thanks to purposeful renovations and sensible innovations, we have repeatedly brought our hotel operations up to date. We were the first hotel in Switzerland to replace the traditional guest directory with practical tablets. Our understanding of hospitality, on the other hand, is quite classic.
As early as the 1920s and 1930s, there was a Walhalla restaurant on the corner of Sihlquai 9 in Zurich's urban district 5. In 1944, Hermann Trümpy took over the Walhalla restaurant and later acquired the entire building complex of three properties on the corner of Limmatstrasse and Sihlquai. He gradually converted apartments that became vacant into guest rooms. As late as the 1960s, the Hotel-Restaurant Walhalla (55 beds, Sihlquai 9) and the Hotel Trümpy (100 beds, Limmatstrasse 5) appeared separately in hotel directories.
In 1988, the construction company Marti AG took over the building complex on Limmatstrasse/Sihlquai and the branch with the Jumbo Bar on Konradstrasse 13 from the Trümpy family, who continued to run the business as tenants for a few years. In 1991 the hotel was leased to the hotelier Peter Vogel and established under the name "Arc en Ville".
In 1996, Fred Tschanz, the visionary and well-known restaurateur, bought both buildings. Initially planned as a pure investment, the hotel was completely renovated in 1997, including the fifth floor, which had previously been used as the manager's apartment.
On November 1, 1997, the Walhalla Hotel reopened. From then on, the former Walhalla restaurant was subleased and operated by the Bindella company as the Latini restaurant. In 2007, the Walhalla Guest House on Konradstrasse was renovated and was one of the first houses to be fitted with compact shower cubicles.
The lease with the Bindella company ended in 1998, so the former kitchen areas on the first floor could be converted into conference rooms and a breakfast restaurant. Starbucks opened one of its first branches in Zurich on the ground floor.
As part of a repositioning of the hotel, the hotel rooms and bathrooms were renovated from 2010 to 2014. In 2013, the Walhalla Hotel became the first hotel in Switzerland to replace the traditional guest folder with tablet PC's. This innovation did not go unnoticed in the industry for long: in the years that followed, Zurich Tourism promoted it as part of the "Digital City" strategy and encouraged hoteliers to follow this trend.
The Walhalla Guest House was completely renovated in 2015 and was repositioned as a 2-star superior hotel. Overall, the Walhalla Hotel & Guest House has undergone a real image change in recent years and has evolved from a conservative 2-star & 3-star train station hotel into a modern, lively and innovative hotel project in a prominent location. In 2016, this strategy resulted in the classification as a 3-star superior hotel.
Further projects were planned and since 2017, the iMotion rooms were created on the 4th floor of the Walhalla Guest House. The Walhalla Hotel also submitted a building application to build a terrace in the courtyard at the level of the 1st floor. This project was also successfully implemented.
A complete renovation of the Walhalla Hotel initiated the rebranding of all three hotels of the Fred Tschanz Group. In the future, the three hotels will appear under the Fred Hotels Zürich brand – each supplemented by location and concept: from the Fred Hotel Zürich Hauptbahnhof, Hauptbahnhof | Guest House to the Fred Hotel Zürich Leonhardstrasse | Self check in.