The team behind a Birmingham hotel is on the cusp of signing a deal to launch its second venture in the city as work starts to expand its first.
Colin Graham, co-founder of Bloc in the Jewellery Quarter, said he was close to sealing a "prime" site for the company's second hotel in the city.
The news comes as demolition and construction work starts to add a further 31 apart-hotel rooms to the rear of the firm's 73-bedroom hotel in Caroline Street.
Mr Graham told the Post: "We are working on a couple of sites in London, neither of which have come off yet, and we're hoping to get another site in Birmingham for a mixture of the two types of rooms which is how we see the business going forward now.
"We're quite close on the one Birmingham - we can't say where it is yet - but it's a good, prime location. We're also looking at one in Liverpool which we are close on as well so there is quite a lot going on but we have to take things one step at a time.
"We receive lots of offers to do things all over the place and you can get tempted but we need to get our grounding here. We're aiming to have ten or so in the UK before we think about spreading our wings and going abroad.
"Europe would probably be the sensible move rather than the States although we have a lot of contacts in America."
Bloc's compact rooms contain the usual facilities such as en-suite bathrooms and televisions but aim to maximise the space available by stripping out everything deemed unnecessary, enabling developers to pack more rooms into a building and concentrate on the quality of the fit-out.
The company opened its first hotel in April 2011 in the Jewellery Quarter which was followed by a 245-room site at Gatwick Airport in February 2014 which uses tablet technology to control the room's functions such as lighting.
Built in a former Easyjet training centre, this is also being extended by a further 150 rooms and its high occupancy rate has prompted Mr Graham to consider further airport locations.
Warwickshire construction company Team Xero is leading the Jewellery Quarter extension which is due to be finished in February.
Mr Graham, who worked on the design and fit out of the Radisson Blu in Birmingham, added: "The apart-hotel is double the size of the hotel's rooms but still small for an apartment.
"They will be the same size in square metres as a hotel room in somewhere like a Travelodge but you get everything you would expect in an apartment such as desk, bedroom, bathroom, microwave, sink and fridge.
"It will be an apart-hotel rather than serviced apartments as you still get all the benefits of the hotel such as reception at the front."
