Regent Hotels is the international company hoping to open a new five-star hotel at the Par-la-Ville car park site in Hamilton, can reveal.

Regent is owned by the Carlson Group, one of the largest private conglomerations in the world, which also owns the Radisson cruise ship group, Park Plaza Hotels, and the Carlson Wagonlit travel agent business.

Radisson has just signed a deal to send its upmarket to Bermuda this summer after a successful first season last year.

Carlson Hotels confirmed yesterday they are interested in tying in their cruise passengers to the new hotel ? if the development goes ahead.

And Richard Halsey, of Pembak Ltd., the Bermudian development company behind the project, said he hoped to complete the financing in 30 or 40 days and possibly begin work in the spring.

Mr. Halsey, who bought the Belmont Hotel in 2000, said he was confident the Corporation of Hamilton, which owns the site, will approve the plans for a 200-room, five-star hotel with condominiums.

The plan is for 120 hotel rooms, 40 condominiums of two rooms each which can be leased by the owners as hotel rooms, and 40 privately-owned condos.

Roland Mouly, Carlson Hotels Worldwide vice-president of development, told yesterday: ?We are in discussions and we are very interested in establishing a presence in Bermuda.

?We?ve had a number of executives go there to look at the site and the competition, and we are comfortable with developing there.

?The interesting thing is that typically we have upscale, small, luxury cruise ships and we could combine them (ship and hotel) both.

?Clients could fly in, stay over and experience the Island and come back through the cruise ship. ?It is typically difficult to do that, but because of the location and access to the Island, it is a nice cruise, we could do something interesting.

?Carlson?s strength is in sales and marketing and if we can expand the cruise ships to the hotels, everyone benefits.

?Business to business visitors there are quite a lot, but in leisure we could get more in. We have such a high presence in travel and cruise ships and if we can combine the hotels and the cruise ships, both would benefit, as would Bermuda.?

Mr. Halsey told yesterday: ?We have the financing pretty well done. We have terms of agreement with a bank in Germany with offices in London.

?We are probably 85 percent done and we just have to get bits and pieces of equity to go with the bank loan and we are good to go.

?We?ve got real co-operation from the Ministry of Tourism and everyone in Government is very excited about the project. We just need to push it over that final hurdle and we?ll be ready to go.?

Mr. Halsey said his group now had to put final plans and financing to the Corporation to seek approval, but he was confident of success.

The Corporation signed a memorandum of understanding with Pembak in February, but it has refused to release any information about whether any progress is being made.has called Corporation Secretary Kelly Miller every day for more than a week but she has not responded.