“New Hotel Will Be On Queen’s Building Site,” announced a South China Morning Post headline on July 9, 1960. “The $55,000,000 luxury hotel to be built on the site of the present Queen’s Building will be one of the tallest buildings in Hongkong and will have up-to-date conveniences ranging from television in the bedrooms to telephones in the bathrooms,” reported the Post on November 18. Despite having settled on the name Queen’s Hotel, on August 24, 1962, it was announced that the property would instead be called the Mandarin. “A nationwide survey of the United States seeking American reaction to the hotel name shows that the American public, who comprised the majority of this Colony’s tourists, preferred the exotic-sounding Mandarin,” reported the Post . At the hotel’s topping off ceremony, on March 28, 1963, “Mandarin lion dancers cavorted […] invoking good fortune for the hotel’s builders and future occupants.” On September 1, the Post reported: “The Mandarin opened quietly today [to accept guests from the closing Gloucester]. Only a small portion of the 650-room, 27-storey hotel will be in use. The official opening of all the hotel’s services will be in a few weeks.” A Post reporter described “an elegance through simplicity”. But while “elegance is certainly the theme of the hotel, the designers have not forgotten space-age engineering achievements”, among them “gentle lifts” that whisk guests from the mezzanine to the 27th floor “in 21 seconds”. The Mandarin was officially opened on October 24, 1963. In 1988 the hotel was renamed the Mandarin Oriental.