Zip World considers hotel for its next adventure

Zip wire attraction operator Zip World hopes to develop an “adventure hotel” in Snowdonia to build on its accelerating investment in the area. Sean Taylor, the company’s commercial director and co-owner, outlined the idea and other plans in an interview in the December 2016 / January 2017 edition of Wales Business Insider magazine.Taylor said the business was considering building a hotel with caverns, slides, virtual reality technology and saunas close to its Zip World Fforest site near Betwys-y-Coed.He added the hotel would help ease an accommodation shortage which means some Zip World customers have had to stay as far away as Liverpool.Zip World plans to invest £6m to develop and upgrade attractions in 2017. These include Zip Coaster, which will run on elevated tracks through trees at Zip World Forest; and a visitor centre and more zip wires at Zip World Velocity, the fastest zip wire in the world, near Bethesda.In North Wales, Zip World hopes to gain the naming rights for Parc Eirias, the stadium in Colwyn Bay which is home to the RGC 1404 rugby side.The company recently recruited David Stacey, the former UK operations director of Virgin Active, to be its managing director.Taylor said Zip World would make sales of between £10.5m and £11m in the year to December, and predicted growth of 22 per cent for 2017.The latest edition of Wales Business Insider also includes a guide to company funding, support for start-ups, Newport, Neath Port Talbot, the top events of 2017 and interviews with Alison Orrells of Safety Letterbox and Tim Goodson of DVS.