The Waldorf Hilton, once the jewel in the crown of the old Forte hotel empire, looks set to be acquired by one of Britain’s wealthiest Asian entrepreneurs for £185 million.

Gulshan Bhatia, a Tanzanian Asian who, with her son Asif, has built a fortune of more than £70 million as a hotelier, is believed to be the front-runner to acquire the 299-room Waldorf in Central London from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

The hotel, which is operated under a lease by Hilton Hotels Corporation, is one of four properties with a combined value of up to £650 million put up for sale by RBS last month through CB Richard Ellis Hotels, the property consultancy. Two previous attempts by RBS to sell the Waldorf as part of a larger portfolio foundered in volatile market conditions.

The four hotels, with 11 other Hilton properties, were due to be sold to Vector Hospitality, a putative real estate investment trust, for £1.1 billion. The deal collapsed in June when a proposed £2 billion flotation of Vector was cancelled. A few weeks later, RBS agreed to sell the 15 hotels to Robson Asset Management, an investment vehicle. This sale failed because of the credit crisis.

Mrs Bhatia, who owns the Hilton London Paddington and the Hyatt Regency Birmingham, could not speak English when she came to Britain in 1976 with her husband and four children. She used her savings to buy a B&B in Paddington for £190,000 and charged £3 per room.

She went on to become the first female Holiday Inn franchisee in the UK when she took over the Holiday Inn Gatwick. She bought and sold several hotels, using the profits to buy the Great Western, in Paddington, for £10 million in 1986. The hotel, built to resemble a French château, reopened in 2002 after a £60 million renovation.

Mrs Bhatia, who is understood to have faced competition from Qatari, Bahraini and Israeli investors to buy the Waldorf, is expected to retain the lease arrangement with Hilton, although sources believe she may seek to convert the lease to a management contract with the US hotel behemoth.

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