A LUXURY four star hotel is due to open in North Yorkshire next year after an investment of more than £5 million.

Sandburn Hall Hotel is on the family-owned 1,000 acre estate of one of North Yorkshire’s leading golf resorts, and is on target to welcome guests to its 40 bedrooms in Spring.

It is the first significant new-build hotel development between York and the coast for more than 20 years.

Developed by the late Mike Hogg, whose family continue his legacy, the estate just off the A64, near Castle Howard, already offers an 18-hole championship golf course, the Grand Function Hall for weddings and events, and the popular Tykes restaurant.

The hotel usually welcomes more than 10,000 leisure and business customers each year, and is expected to contribute more than £2 million a year to the Yorkshire tourism economy.

Two luxurious suites will feature pencil post four-poster beds and balconies overlooking the hotel’s courtyard and landscaped lakes and gardens.

The hotel will also feature standard, superior, family and accessible rooms designed by hospitality interior designer Rachel McLane, with views overlooking lakes and open countryside from most of them.

With walking and cycling trails on the estate, hotel visitors will be invited to enjoy a wide range of leisure packages, championing York and North Yorkshire. These will be launched later this Autumn.

Hotel director James Hogg said: “We’re really crafting a brand new countryside hotel using fantastic raw materials such as the natural green oak beams which frame our triple-height lobby.

“We’re merging traditional and contemporary, with some of the rooms having exposed brick, and the whole building will be an echo to the trademark design of our existing meetings and weddings area, the Grand Function Hall, and Tykes restaurant.”