Hotel group aims to mint new image with rebranding

The City Inn in Leeds, which opened in the summer of 2009, is now known as the Mint Hotel Leeds.

The company behind the 333-bed hotel, City Inn, has decided to become known as Mint Hotel as it prepares to open hotels in London and Amsterdam.

Leeds already has a large office building called The Mint, and a spokesman for the hotel said it had contacted the five biggest taxi firms in Leeds to tell them about the name change, in order to avoid confusion.

A company spokesman said: "Mint Hotel Leeds employs more than 200 staff and business, although challenging, has exceeded expectations, driven by meeting and events, accommodation and the popularity of the hotel's Sky Lounge."

Mint Hotel will open a second London property of 583 rooms near the Tower of London, in Pepys Street, on December 20. It is also expanding overseas with a hotel of 553 rooms, which is opening in Amsterdam in the spring of 2011.

City Inn was founded in 1995 by a management team that included Sandy Orr and David Orr.

In a statement, the company said that the founders of City Inn had decided that the company's name "did not do justice to the overall experience of the brand".

Sandy Orr, the executive chairman and co-founder of Mint Hotel said yesterday: "Our business was created from scratch, it was designed to be a forward-looking, innovative city centre hotel brand. Now, with the opening of two new world-class hotels in the most exceptional locations in the City of London and Amsterdam we recognised it was time to give our company the branding it deserved."

David Orr, the chief executive, added: "Mint Hotel gives us an instantly memorable identity to embrace the quality and modernity of what we do. The hotel business has a full part to play in the economic and social fabric of our cities and we are delighted to be at the forefront of this with our new hotels and new brand."

Apart from Leeds, Mint Hotel also has properties in Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham, Westminster and Manchester.