PREMIER Inn officially opened its 701st hotel on Monday.

It is in Basingstoke’s Top of The Town and was opened by the Mayor Councillor Anne Court The new 81-bedroom hotel owned by Whitbread plc, in Victoria Street, is expected to contribute around £5million to the local economy.

Cluster general manager at Whitbread, Richard Powell, said the property is helping to address the shortage of hotel room space for business travellers in Basingstoke.

He said: “There is a demand for here in Basingstoke as it is a very corporate based area.

“In fact we’ve become a lot busier a lot quicker than we thought.

“We opened on July 13 and we thought we were going to be 40 to 50 per cent full on the second day, but we were full and we’ve been full ever since.”

It is the borough’s third Premier Inn, with one on Basingstoke Leisure Park and another at North Waltham.

“This new hotel will attract a slightly different clientele with more business people,” said Mr Powell.

Delighted with the new hotel, which was built on the site of an office building that had been empty for a number of years, Mr Powell said: “This is number 701 – we are literally opening a new hotel every single week.”

He said part of the brand’s success lies with its staff, who are often recruited from people who have been long term unemployed.

Among the team of 31 working at the hotel, eight have been long-term unemployed people.

“Our teams like to work for us because we have a very clear development programme for them.

“We do NVQ level 2 apprenticeships right the way to level 7 which is the equivalent to a masters degree, so we have a really fast development programme.”

This was backed up by operations manager Lucy Walpole, who said she has received very favourable feedback from the local business community.

“We’ve also had some amazing guest feedback about our staff.

“They’ve been absolutely fantastic. We’ve had an intense couple of weeks of training and they are doing great with the team settling in very well.”

Aware of criticism that Basingstoke lacks hotel rooms for visiting business people, Cllr Court said: “This is something that Basingstoke really needs.

“The hotel is close to the town centre and our business areas and I would hope it would give the Top of The Town a boost.”

Among the guests at the opening was Dan Kelly, from the North Hampshire Hoteliers Association.

He said: “This is a welcome addition to Basingstoke – it’s been finished beautifully. The bedrooms look good and downstairs area looks great too.”

Mr Kelly, who is general manager of The Hampshire Court Hotel, in Chineham, added: “I think Premier Inn have worked hard for the last couple of months getting people recruited and now they join the rest of us in getting people into the town – it’s something positive for Basingstoke.”