The owner of Ilkley’s Craiglands Hotel wants to put the town back on the map as the county’s top spa destination.

Mike Chawla says the Cowpasture Road hotel is performing very well, despite a planning consultant’s report claiming it is currently running at an unsustainable level.

But Mr Chawla said the hotel had done extremely well through the recession, with many Christmas events booked, as well as weddings and other events next year.

A planning application was recently submitted to Bradford Council on behalf of the hotel, seeking permission to build nine houses on a car park in the hotel grounds.

The money would then be invested in creating a spa in the hotel basement, and other improvements.

Mr Chawla told the Gazette he wanted to retain Ilkley’s historic reputation as a four star destination.

“The plan is to invest a lot of money in the hotel to bring more tourism to this part of the world. Ilkley used to be the spa destination for this county, I want to put that back here again.”

The Craiglands was one of several hydropathic hotels in Ilkley which led to the growth of the town in the 19th Century as a spa town. It remains the only hydro in Ilkley still in use as hotel today.

Mr Chawla said the hotel has already taken many bookings around the time of the Tour de France Grand Depart next summer – expected to bring a huge tourist boom to the region – but they were still taking bookings.

The 62-bedroom hotel also hosts banquets, conferences, is a wedding venue, and has a restaurant open to non-residents.

Mr Chawla believes the return of a spa to the hotel will boost both the business and the town itself.

He plans to generate money for the work by building one block of five houses and another or four, on a car park at one side of the hotel. The houses would have three to five bedrooms.

Car parking elsewhere in the grounds would also be redesigned, if Bradford Council grants permission to the scheme. The proposal for housing is said to be a reworking of a 14-home plan drawn up last year.