Orr targets jobless with hotel initiative

A PIONEERING hotel and jobs initiative is to be rolled out in the City of London by a Scottish businessman, targeting the jobless in poorer surrounding areas.

David Orr, chief executive and co-founder of the City Inn chain, says the new 150 million City Inn Tower of London development will open on 20 December and bring 300 jobs to the area.

The chain already has seven outlets and the latest, in London's Pepys Street, is a participant in the government-funded Go Forward scheme.

A spokesman for Orr said the City Inn, which will have 583 rooms, would offer training and employment opportunities specifically to people from underprivileged backgrounds in surrounding areas.

"That includes Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest boroughs in Britain," the spokesman said. "The hotel is in the heart of the City's financial district, but the area surrounded by the hotel has been badly hit by the recession, leading to the closure of many shops and businesses.

"Prime Minister David Cameron has championed tourism as a way of rapidly helping an economy recover, and David Orr is confident that this will be demonstrated by the City Inn's new community-oriented Tower of London hotel."

City Inn has already broken into the London market with City Inn Westminster, an established modern hotel particularly favoured by business people, politicians and the media.

City Inn Hotels was set up in 1995 as a joint venture with Orr and the Bank of Scotland, now part of Lloyds Banking Group.

As well as its UK sites, the firm will open a hotel in Amsterdam in May next year.