Weeks after another application for a hotel on Kingston's Skerne Road site was rejected, a Tamil television station has its sights set on building Kingston's first major hotel.

Sun Hotel, which is owned by broadcasting company Sun TV, hopes to build a four-star franchised Holiday Inn on the site of a disused office building in Portsmouth Road, between Thames Ditton and Surbiton.

Narayana Murthy, from Sun Hotel, said the company had received outline permission for the application but hopes to put in a further application to increase the number of rooms from 94 to 120.

This will be the first venture into the hospitality business for Sun Hotel, which will run the hotel as a franchise under the Holiday Inn brand. Mr Murthy said: "We have two Tamil television channels at the moment and we originally bought the site to use for our offices. We then realised there was an opportunity for a hotel because there isn't a branded hotel in Kingston and we were struggling to even find rooms for our own clients. So we decided to use the site for a hotel."

The company said the new venture will employ at least 45 members of staff and, subject to the next application being accepted, hopes the hotel will be open by July next year. Basic building work has already started on the site.

He said: "We also propose to provide bicycles for guests so they can ride into the town centre."

This proposal is reminiscent of the Skerne Road application, but unlike its lack of parking spaces, Sun Hotel plans to include 84 parking spaces rather than 10. If planning consent is agreed, Sun Hotel, based in Thames Ditton, would have to contribute £18,000 towards highway improvements in the area.

There have been no objections to the hotel and permission is expected to be granted subject to no objections from the Environment Agency.

Other hotels in the area include the newly opened four-star Holiday Inn at Chessington World of Adventures.

Permission to build a 150-bed 4* hotel on the site of the former power station in Skerne Road, Kingston, was rejected by Kingston Council at the end of October due to the design of the adjacent planned block of flats and lack of affordable housing.