The Frankfurt-based Steigenberger Hotel Group is expanding with the launch of six new hotels over the next two years.

The 185-bedroom Steigenberger Hotel de Saxe in Dresden, Germany, opened on 3 April and features a 300sq m (3,200sq ft) spa with a sauna, steamroom and restaurant.

The 30m euro (£21m, US$37m), 139-bedroom Steigenberger Hotel Therme Meran opened in the South Tyrolean resort region of Italy on 18 March – the group’s first Italian venture.

The resort hotel features a 1,200sq m (13,000sq ft) spa with nine treatment rooms, an indoor pool, a whirlpool, a soft aroma pool and a heated outdoor pool, as well as a Finnish sauna, a Turkish steamroom, experience showers, a solarium and a gymnasium.

In addition, guests can access 25 different pools and and vitality centre using local products for treatments at the newly opened 7,650sq m (82,000sq ft) Therme Meran spa accessed via a ‘bathrobe tunnel’.

The hotel has two restaurants and a bar, as well as a smoking club and a lounge.

Matteo Thun designed the interior and Arwed and Regine Sparber manage the hotel.

Further properties set to open include the Steigenberger Strandhotel on the Baltic Sea in June, an all-inclusive resort in Egypt in 2006, an InterCity hotel in Dresden in 2007 and a SPA Hotel on the Isle of Norderney, Germany, in 2008. Details: www.steingenberger.de

Photograph: The Hotel Therme Meran recently opened in the South Tyrolean resort region of Italy.