Apartment-style lodging provider Mint House, which mainly
targets business travelers, is set to open its first New York City location at
70 Pine St. in the Financial District on Nov. 20. The 132 units on floors
three through six in the rental building will be taken over from another hospitality startup, Lyric. Mint House has secured a hotel
license, so will be able to rent the units for less than 30-day stays.
"We think this is a fantastic downtown location and a
really nice building," Mint House founder and CEO Will Lucas told BTN. He added
that the company is targeting other Manhattan locations, including Midtown and
Hudson Yards for future units.
Amenities at the 70 Pine St. building include two gyms, a
bowling alley, a movie theater, an Australian-style coffee shop, the
Michelin-star restaurant Crown Shy, a bar currently under construction, a roof
deck, and a small meeting space, Lucas said. For those uncomfortable going to a
gym at the moment, each unit will have Mirror fitness equipment, according to the company, but a completion date for that installation was not clear.
Mint House has a partnership
with American Express Global Business Travel and will be working with GBT's
consulting and account management teams to help source new clientele for the
location, as it does with other markets. It also used GBT's proprietary data to
provide insight on the downtown location and will work with the travel
management company to determine growth to new markets.
Founded in 2017, Mint House also has locations in Denver, Miami, Minneapolis and Nashville. It will have more than 800 units in
its portfolio counting the New York location, two deals under letters of intent, and
two more locations with planned openings before the end of the year: about 50
units in Austin, Tex., with the potential for more in another building, and
about 30 in Columbus, Ohio. According to Lucas, the company is on
track to nearly double in size and have 1,500 units by the end of 2021.
The company has signed 10 Fortune 200 companies since
February, with two partnering since the beginning of October, Lucas said,
adding that Mint House gets corporate clients mostly through direct outreach
and some inbound, such as being featured at business travel industry
conferences with several travel buyers in attendance. In addition, Illinois
Tool Works made Mint House the first non-hotel preferred vendor in its
corporate travel booking system for 45,000 workers, according to a Mint House
spokesperson.
Some players in the short-term, apartment-style
arena have faced difficulties during the pandemic. Stay Alfred shuttered operations in May and Lyric, which was backed by Airbnb, began laying off employees in February after failing to meet revenue targets. The pandemic precipitated additional layoffs for the company, which also closed down units in several cities. As of July, 70 Pine was Lyric's sole remaining location, according to Forbes, which Mint House will now take over.
Mint House has not only grown its footprint, but also has
recorded average occupancy levels over the past five months at about 80
percent, Lucas said.
"We've been able to do that by leveraging the
advantages we have over traditional hotel spaces," Lucas said. One, the
company has always provided a fully contactless experience, he explained, from check-in
to the digital concierge to the customized refrigerator stocking prior to
arrival. Two, the apartment-style setup is well positioned "for a world
when everyone needs to work remotely." It also is conducive for
longer-term stays. "Pre-pandemic, the average nightly stay was three
nights," he said. "Today, it's more like 16 to 17 nights. Guests are
mostly staying for a few weeks and even for a few months."
Part of that shift has been the increase in customers who book
units for remote work and are behind those longer stays. Mint House also is catering
to people who need to live somewhere temporarily. Currently, the brand is
business traveler and remote worker driven, but there are some leisure guests.
The breakdown is about 80 percent to 20 percent, respectively. But once more
normalized travel resumes, the goal is to have a mix of 65 percent business and
35 percent leisure, Lucas said.
The pandemic did cause the company to make some other changes.
It had to discontinue its massage-on-demand service, but it accelerated adding the
Mirror equipment and rolling out room service powered by ghost kitchens, which are
professional food facilities set up for the preparation of deliver-only meals.
It also launched the Mint Clean Standard, a 74-point
cleaning and hygiene protocol the "essentially cleans everything
twice," Lucan said. "We put a protective coating on all
surfaces—tables, light switches, countertops, TV remotes—that kills the virus
or bacteria if it would land on it even after you have cleaned it."
There's also a "reactive oxygen species" technology that should a
guest walk into a room with the virus on their jacket, it would clean that off
the jacket, he explained.
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Nov. 9, 2020 - This article has been updated from its original version published on Nov. 6 to correct a mention of Mirror fitness equipment that implied the equipment would be installed by the opening date. Mint House has now said the company is unsure about when that project will be completed. The update also includes additional information about Lyric, the startup hospitality company that previously operated the units at 70 Pine.