Plans have been scuppered for a multi-million pound project in Pembrokeshire to create the first Hotel School in Wales.

The aim of the scheme - being put forward by the Tenby Development Trust - was to train around 90 students at a time in the resort’s Fourcroft Hotel on a two-year university degree course.

It was intended that the course would turn out job-ready graduates, who would be trained in every aspect of hotel management at the Fourcroft, which would continue to provide its services to guests.

But the Trust revealed this week that Welsh universities ‘were unable to accommodate the project in their current strategic plans’.

The proposals were launched in January 2013, when it was stated it was hoped that the Hotel School would open its doors in autumn 2015, to provide year-round employment and boost the local economy, as well as putting Tenby on the culinary and academic map.

The Tenby Development Trust - set up as a Social Enterprise limited company, with not-for-private-profit objectives, with the aim of helping Tenby’s regeneration - announced ‘with regret’ that its plans had been ‘defeated’ Explained Trust chairman Phil Bromby: “Over the last two years, detailed discussions have involved the universities of Swansea Metropolitan, then Cardiff Metropolitan and finally University of Wales Trinity St David and a considerable effort has been made by members of the Trust, their project partner Fourcroft Hotel and a number of supporting organisations, not least Coop Consultants, Pembrokeshire County Council, Collaborative Communities, Wales Co-operative Centre, Visit Wales and, indeed, the tourism industry itself.

“Trustees are frustrated that the concept won much support from so many people and organisations, and the independent feasibility study undertaken endorsed its viability, yet it is still unable to proceed. As a matter of record, the funding was not the problem, merely that the universities were unable to accommodate the project in their current strategic plans.

The Trust moves on to other projects to realise opportunities for the town’s enhancement, Fourcroft Hotel is still in business, now and now for evermore, and the prospect of Tenby as a university town remains a long term aspiration.”