Transforming storied heritage residences into luxury hotels is all about striking a balance between conservation and commercial requirements
In properties like the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, the royal family stays on the premises. Restoration artists work closely with them while redoing the estate
Image: Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris
In the Ahilya Fort’s 17-year life as a hotel, Richard Holkar remembers one single guest who took a look around to check the facilities, got back into his car and drove off.
“We are expensive, but we aren’t a typical five-star hotel you see,” says Holkar, pithily summarising the emerging category of heritage hotels, of which the Ahilya Fort in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh, is one. “We don’t have TV, we don’t have room service,” he adds. The 73-year-old Beatles fan is the son of Yeshwant Rao II, the last maharaja of Indore, and one of the descendants of Ahilya Bai, the Maratha queen who ruled the region in the 18th century and after whom the palace on the banks of the Narmada is named.
In 1971, Holkar and his ex-wife Sally came back to India from the US, took over the derelict Ahilya Wada, restored it and opened it as a heritage hotel in 2000. What started with four rooms back then is now an elegant property with 14 rooms in six different areas, “so that you don’t really feel that you are living in a hotel”.
(This story appears in the 13 October, 2017 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)