The proposed 381-metre-high building would tower over London's Shard, which measures a mere 304 metres.

Developers want to build it on the outskirts of Vals, a tiny spa town of just 1000 people, nestled 1219 metres up in the Swiss Alps.

It is not the headquarters of some particularly secretive Swiss bank. It is a proposed luxury hotel, aimed at guests from the Middle East and Asia.

The proposed tower will reportedly contain around 100 suites, with the cheapest priced at around 1000 Swiss francs ($1313) a night, and the most expensive at an eye-watering 25,000 Swiss francs ($32,821).

The project, which will reportedly cost around 200 million Swiss francs ($262.57 million) is to be officially unveiled next week in Zurich.

According to a report in Schweiz am Sonntag newspaper, the developers have chosen a plan by the prize-winning American architect, Thom Mayne.

The tower will rise from an extremely small base, measuring just 30.48 metres by 15.24 metres, and will have to anchored in the ground by unusually deep foundations.

The project is the brainchild of Remo Stoffel, the owner of the Vals spa, and Pius Truffer, a local quarry entrepreneur.

"I know we're reaching for the stars. We want to build one of the five best hotels in the world," Mr Truffer told 20 Minuten newspaper.

But the proposed skyscraper has already come in for heavy criticism in Switzerland.

"Skyscrapers in the Alps are an absurdity," said Vittorio Lampugnani, Professor of Architecture at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.

There is no need to accommodate people in such a small space in the mountains, he said.

"It's marketing," Benedict Loderer, an architecture critic, told Basler Zeitung newspaper, adding that he did not believe the project would come to fruition.

"It's a question of the skyscraper's position. If you put it in a valley, that's relatively meaningless," he said.

The project still has to get planning permission before it can go ahead.

Under Switzerland's system of direct democracy, it will be put to a vote of local citizens in the autumn.

Telegraph, London