A MULTI-MILLION pound new hotel could create up to 60 jobs in Southampton.

The Daily Echo can reveal that hotel giant Marriott is set to build a 152-bed hotel in the city.

Civic chiefs say the new development will provide more hotel beds for the thousands of cruise ship passengers visiting the city every year.

Land near the Ikea superstore and behind the Premier Inn hotel off Harbour Parade is set to be signed over for one of the first new Moxy hotels in the country.

The site had previously been earmarked for offices, but Development Securities Ltd failed to find an occupier for the site.

Now the firm's development agreement with the city council has expired, and civic chiefs have acted quickly to put forward an agreement for the hotel at the site.

The new complex will be built in a partnership between Marriott International, which launched the Moxy brand last year, and Vastint Hospitality, which is linked to the furniture giant Ikea but a separate company.

With one new Moxy hotel already open in Milan in Italy, plans to build 150 new hotels across the world by 2020 were unveiled earlier this month.

The firm says the new hotels, which will include several branches in London, will be affordable but “redesign the traditional economy hotel experience”.

They say the hotels will feature “bold designs” and “contemporary style” with features such as 24 hour self-service grab and go, free wi-fi and “vibrant” lobby spaces.

In a report recommending the site be signed over to the developer, city council officers say there is a “strong growth in demand” for hotel accommodation, with the number of annual cruise liner visits set to expand by 25 per cent by 2020 and another 25 per cent over the next decade.

City council leader Simon Letts said he believed the new development could create “50 or 60” new jobs.

He said: “It's an exciting use of an empty site in the city centre which will generate employment and fills in the final piece of the jigsaw for Watermark WestQuay.

“We will therefore have two hotels on the site which will create some commercial tension which will be good for visitors.

“The important thing is that a company as big as Marriott has chosen Southampton as the first place in the South for a hotel of this kind.”

If the city council's cabinet agrees to sign off the new site at its meeting tomorrow(Tuesday March 17), planning permission will still be needed for the new building but if that is granted work should start quickly and could be completed in line with the firm's other Moxy hotels in the UK, which are due to be completed by winter 2016.

Marriott and Vastint declined to comment on the proposals for the Southampton hotel before the deal was signed off.