Boutique hotel chain Malmaison has announced plans to spend £3 million renovating the St Andrews Golf Hotel on the town’s Scores, with work starting later this year.
Chief executive Gary Davis also announced the chain will welcome its first paying guests to the refurbished Tay Hotel in central Dundee on September 8.
The refurbishment will see the hotel close for a period of months from November to allow a 20-bed extension to be added.
Afterwards the property will be rebranded as a Hotel du Vin.
Mr Davis was speaking as US private equity firm KSL Capital Partners completed a reported £180m takeover deal for the 27-strong Malmaison and Hotel du Vin chain, which has been in limbo since its parent MWB Group collapsed into administration in November.
Representatives of KSL, which is based in Colorado, have travelled to Scotland to see the Dundee and St Andrews hotels for themselves, and Mr Davis said they were excited about adding them to an extensive leisure portfolio which already includes the Belfry, a former Ryder Cup venue.
KSL Capital Partners has been circling ever since MWB entered adminstration. Malmaison has continued to operate in the interim and is pushing ahead with its multi-million-pound redevelopment of the mothballed former Tay Hotel.
Mr Davis said the KSL deal secured the future of the chain and gave it access to significant funds for future growth.
While MWB Group racked up multi-million-pound losses, the hotel arm of the company remained profitable.
He said KSL representatives had been to the region to tour both the Dundee site and St Andrews hotel and had been impressed by what they saw.
“We visited Dundee a few weeks ago with KSL and they had a good look at the location and the development of the city with the V&A and the waterfront,” he said. “The investment really excited them and they thought the building was amazing. I also took them to St Andrews and they loved the location there too.
“St Andrews is a fantastic fit for the Hotel Du Vin brand and with this KSL announcement it now means we have the capital to put into the project.”