French hotel group Accor is to open two new hotels in Edinburgh and Glasgow next year, bringing the total number of properties in Scotland to 20.
The company also plans to open 10 new sites around the country by 2017.
Accor, the world's largest hotel chain, will open a mid-market 110-room Mercure hotel in central Edinburgh next spring, and a budget 101-room Ibis Styles hotel in central Glasgow next autumn.
In the case of the Glasgow site, some £7 million of investment is coming from an investors' syndicate put together by Glasgow-based private equity firm Maven Capital Partners.
The Glasgow Ibis Styles will be in Miller Street in Merchant City, in a refurbished seven-storey sandstone tenement called Telfer House. The hotel will be operated by local management company Redefine BDL Hotels, and is expected to create 25 jobs.
The Edinburgh Mercure will be housed in a new building in Gardner's Crescent in the west end of the city, close to the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, and will be operated by franchise partner Edinburgh City Hotels Ltd.
The new hotels will bring the number of Accor sites in Edinburgh to eight and five in Glasgow.
Accor's UK managing director, Thomas Dubaere, said that the new investment demonstrates Accor's commitment to growing its business in Scotland, which currently employs almost 1000 people.
The company has identified the economy and mid-market sectors as having high growth potential and has, over the last 12 months, opened three new budget hotels in Edinburgh.
Dubaere said: "Scotland is an important region for us, so we continue to seek new opportunities to grow and participate in the local economy."
The bulk of the finance behind most of Accor's recently opened hotels in the UK comes not from Accor itself but from other companies, which often lack hotel management experience and prefer to take a franchise from a large chain of hotels. This allows them to buy into an established brand and tap into the chain's centralised reservations system.
Telfer House was snapped up at an auction last year for around £560,000 and the project will take advantage of the Business Premises Renovation Allowance (BPRA) which has, since 2007, provided tax incentives to bring empty buildings back into use.
The announcement of the investment, jobs and extra hotel beds has been welcomed by both cities.
Glasgow, in particular, will see a major increase in hotel capacity next year with four other hotels - a Travelodge, Hampton Inn, Motel One and a De Vere Village - also scheduled to open, adding more than 800 rooms to the city's accommodation stock.
According to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, the hosting of high-profile events such as the Commonwealth Games this year boosted the city's hotel occupancy rate 5.4% to 82.7%.
This means that Glasgow is now on a par with London as the strongest in Europe, outperforming major tourist destinations such as Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Amsterdam.
Leader of Glasgow City Council, Gordon Matheson, said that a drive for the city to host a diverse range of international conventions and major sporting and cultural events was paying off.
He said: "There's plenty more conferences, events and short break business in the pipeline, confirmed through to 2021, to ensure the future profitability of the supply chain."
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