SCOTLAND is leading a renaissance in hotel development. The broadening appeal of designer hotels has kick-started the hospitality industry into offering business and leisure travellers an increasing range of intimate inns that refuse to compromise on style.

For years, travelling executives have been faced with three options when selecting hotels north of the Border - palatial palaces that hark back to another era but whose prices are fit for the next millennium; floral love-nests where fax machines seem an anathema among the frilly drapes; or relentlessly beige, anonymous stereotyped boxes with the ubiquitous health club that rarely runs to more than a couple of dumb-bells. Now there is a new option - the trendy design hotel that offers a cocktail of the hippest hacienda blended with just the right amount of attitude to give it that ''je ne sais quoi''.

The undisputed orchestrator of this new trend in design-led hotels is Ken McCulloch, and the success of One Devonshire Gardens and the Malmaison Hotels in Glasgow and Leith is testimony to his vision. While these hotels were aimed at wooing patronage from such laid-back businesses as advertising, media and entertainment, they are now favourites with bankers, brokers and bureaucrats.

Having successfully created his own niche with the Town House Company, Peter Taylor has witnessed healthy occupancy levels at both The Howard and Channings Hotels. These small, esoteric properties have become so popular with many executives that a third property opens in Edinburgh this month.

All 50 guest rooms at The Bonham will be individually designed in bold colours using fabrics that have been woven in Scotland. Each room will feature digital televisions linked to the Internet with infra-red keyboards and modem link-hole telephones with voice-mail and ISDN. A contemporary ambience will be created by an interesting use of lighting in the public areas to showcase the work of local artists.

Today another Scot is set to challenge the ethos of London's grandest hotels with the opening of One Aldwych - a hotel that is as idiosyncratic as it is iconoclastic. When just 17 years old, Gordon Campbell Gray enjoyed lunch with his parents at the Lomond Castle Hotel. Impressed by the energy and excitement of the hospitality industry he decided to become a hotelier and subsequently studied at hotel school before management work beckoned in London.

In the eighties Campbell Gray acquired two hotels in England, turning them into discreet bolt-holes before selling both to move to America. There he bought and transformed a hideaway in the Hamptons of Long Island, New York. Sustained by the vision of a luxury hotel in London reflecting ''stealth wealth'', he returned to create a template for what he believes a luxury hotel for the new millennium ought to be.

''Our philosophy is to pare back the layers of snobbism for both staff and guests. So many five-star hotels overwhelm their guests by the dripping deluxe, I felt that there was space and demand for a less pretentious form of luxury. When our first guests arrive on June 15, they will discover a design-led, contemporary hotel backed up by the most personable service on offer anywhere in the capital,'' said Campbell Gray last week.

Built in 1907 for the Morning Post newspaper, Inveresk House - now One Aldwych - occupies a triangular site on the corner of Aldwych and Strand and is one of the most important Edwardian buildings in London. With such an enviable location - where the Square Mile meets the West End - it is ideal for business and leisure visitors to London. Of the two restaurants, Axis offers a sophisticated yet relaxed setting for modern European cuisine, while Indigo serves a healthy creative cuisine in an easy-going atmosphere. The mood is continued in the Health Club where the 18-metre swimming pool comes complete with underwater music.

''Guests will find One Aldwych subtle with no design cliches or superfluous trappings of luxury,'' said Campbell Gray.

''Nothing is so dull as standardisation, and nothing dates so quickly as trendy. Our interiors may be interesting and different, but comfort and function have not been sacrificed in the name of design.''

A recent report by hotel consultancy Pannell Kerr Forster highlighted 83.9% occupancy levels in London's hotels during 1997, with business travellers reaching their highest levels for 20 years. By all accounts, One Aldwych's 105 rooms and suites will become the inn for the in-crowd overnight.