Six Senses Resorts & Spas – in partnership with Favourite Group, Auro Holdings and Timex Garments – has signed an agreement with Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings, to establish its first two Six Senses projects in Sri Lanka.

The US$45m (£28m, 33m euro) deal will see two Six Senses resorts being developed on the island.

Six Senses Galle Resort and Spa will include residential villas and will be located on a 10.5-acre plot.

Six Senses Meeraladuaa will be de an ecological, environmentally very low impact site offering accommodation in “semi tented structures” on a 27-acre island nearby. The proposed opening date for both properties is late 2012.

As part of the deal Six Senses intends to make Sri Lanka its Indian Ocean regional headquarters, from which to oversee all future operations in the region.

Six Senses currently operates fourteen high-end resorts branded as Soneva, Six Senses and Evason in the Maldives, Thailand, Vietnam, Oman and Jordan.

There are also several new developments underway in locations such as Morocco, Turks and Caicos and China.

The Six Senses Spa division has twenty-seven company-operated spas, with new spa developments underway in several locations, including India, Morocco and, Oman.