THE £17m Village Hotel and Leisure Club, a 122-bedroom complex just off Junction 5 of the M20, was officially unveiled on July 15.

Carl Leaver, chief executive of the De Vere Group, performed the honours at a ceremony attended by civic and business chiefs.

The hotel, which has created 140 jobs, is the 13th under The Village brand and the first to open in Southern England.

De Vere is so pleased with the format that it is investing millions of pounds in a further four or five new ones every year over the next few years.

Mr Leaver said before unveiling a plaque: "Maidstone is impressively buoyant and extremely important as a commercial, leisure and tourism destination. We are tremendously excited about this development and really privileged to be part of Maidstone's future."

The Mayor of Maidstone, Cllr Peter Hooper, welcomed the De Vere Group to Maidstone. "I know they've made the right choice and they will reap the benefit of their investment and confidence in this great County Town of ours.

"I encourage the people of Maidstone and the surrounding area to come and sample what De Vere has to offer here because it is much more than a place where you sleep overnight, with all the additional facilities it has to offer."

Village hotels are aimed at the community as well as people staying overnight. Mr Leaver said that its leisure club, pub, restaurant and business/conference facilities typically accounted for around 70 per cent of revenue, with just 30 per cent coming from room sales.

"We don't want to be forbidding or intimidating - where we want to position ourselves is being very straightforward, friendly and hospitable, every bit as much for the local community as for room guests."

Mr Leaver, who previously worked for Marriott hotels and later the Whitbread Travel Inn chain, confirmed that he would like to build another Village Hotel in Kent, singling out Ashford for special attention.

Hotel manager Wan Cheah said that 1,700 people had already joined the leisure club. He welcomed corporate business, saying that the hotel's conference facilities can cater for up to 200 people.

De Vere has an annual turnover of £200m, a quarter of which comes from The Village brand. The group recently defeated a hostile bid by Guinness Peat to add a further 25 per cent stake to its existing 10 per cent shareholding. But De Vere lost a takeover bid for the Premier Lodge chain of budget hotels.