President Obama has reportedly booked the whole of the Taj Mahal luxury hotel in Mumbai for two days for his visit next week.
The 547-room hotel and its restaurants will be no-go areas for non-hotel staff while he is staying. The Presidential party is also reported to have booked more than 200 other rooms at hotels elsewhere in the city.
“Obama’s contingent is huge,” a senior Indian security official is quoted as saying. “There are two jumbo jets coming along with Air Force One, which will be flanked by security jets. The President’s convoy has 45 cars.”
Two years ago, the Taj Mahal was the scene of a three-day battle between Indian commandos and terrorists who stormed the luxury Mumbai landmark as part of a deadly rampage through the city. The restored hotel reopened in August.
A heavy security cordon will be in place around the hotel during the Obamas’ short visit, and US Navy and Indian ships will patrol the waterfront outside the hotel to guard against any attacks.
by Andy Moreton
Perhaps not next week … but at all other times, the Taj Mahal Palace, as well as other luxury hotels in Mumbai, can be booked through Luxique.
I was delighted to see that the Taj Mahal Palace luxury hotel in Mumbai has now fully re-opened, nearly two years after a devastating terrorist attack which killed 31 people.
Fittingly, the grand re-opening took place on India’s Independence Day – August 15th.
The Tower Wing of the hotel has been open for more than a year, and now the Palace Wing is back in business after a $37 million (£24 million) renovation.
Part of the restoration project included work on the luxury hotel’s extensive art collection, which was painstakingly restored for the re-opening. More than 300 important pieces now hang in the banquet hall, the lounge, and a bar off the main lobby.
According to Raymond Bickson, the Managing Director of Taj Hotels, ‘a cast of thousands’ undertook the extensive restoration of the hotel, staying true to the original design and spirit.
The hotel was founded in 1903 and is one of the most famous in India. It has welcomed countless celebrities through its doors, from heads of state to movie stars.
by Andy Moreton
The Taj Mahal Palace, as well as other luxury hotels in Mumbai, can be booked through Luxique.
The luxury hotel, the Oberoi, one of the best-known landmarks in Mumbai, has re-opened, eighteen months after being badly damaged when militants stormed the city.
Nearly 170 people died in the attack, more than 30 of them staff and guests of the Oberoi. Many rooms were destroyed as the gunmen rampaged through the luxury hotel, firing indiscriminately and setting off explosions.
The hotel has now been refurbished at a cost of £26m ($40 million). There was a low-key re-opening and promises of ‘a new beginning’.
The adjoining Trident hotel and nearby Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, which were also stormed by armed gunmen, both re-opened within a month of the attacks, with the Taj Mahal erecting a visible permanent memorial to its fallen staff and guests.
Every room in the Oberoi has been refurbished, there’s been an improvement in facilities, including the latest technology, and security has been stepped up. There are now ten times as many CCTV cameras as before.
by Andy Moreton
The former Bombay is India’s largest and most multi-cultural city. Book a luxury hotel in Mumbai through Luxique.
A hotel that was once the grandest in the Indian city of Mumbai is in danger of falling down.
Watson’s was built in 1871 from a cast iron frame that was made in England and then shipped to what was then Bombay. The building became one of the most opulent symbols of the period of British rule known as The Raj.
Watson’s fell into decline in the 1960s and was sold. Renamed Esplanade Mansion, it was rented out as office space and is now in a poor state of repair. The impressive atrium has been smashed and the ballroom is used as a rubbish dump. Several of the balconies that once looked out over the Arabian Sea have disintegrated.
In 2005, it was put on a list of endangered buildings by the New York-based World Monuments Fund, but a promise to restore it has slipped off the Indian government’s agenda and it’s thought the structure could collapse any day.
Conservationists say it’s historically important and ought to be preserved. One of its distinguished guests was Mark Twain, who stayed there in 1896 and wrote about Bombay’s crows in Following The Equator.
At its peak, Watson’s had a whites-only policy and legend has it that a prominent businessman, upset at being refused entry one evening, decided to build the Taj Mahal Hotel, which has become Mumbai’s most famous hotel and a symbol of modern India.
by Andy Moreton, with Barney Henderson in Mumbai
We can’t get you a room at Watson’s any more, but Luxique negotiates the best rates at the Taj Mahal and Le Royal Meridien Mumbai.
It was good to see the re-opening of some parts of the Taj Mahal Palace and Trident hotels in Mumbai after the death and destruction wreaked by terrorists on November 26.
At the re-opening of the Taj Mahal, all the 592 staff of the hotel who were on duty on that fateful day received thunderous applause from the guests.
“The Taj has been reopened, after a massive concerted effort, in dedication to all those who lost their lives in the attacks on Mumbai,” said Ratan Tata, chairman of the Taj Group of Hotels.
A memorial called The Tree of Life was also unveiled, with the names of the 31 people who were killed at the hotel inscribed at its base.
Security at all hotels in India has been tightened considerably and in the state of Goa, the authorities banned traditional beach parties between Christmas and New Year’s Eve because of possible terrorist attacks. The parties have traditionally been major tourist attractions.
by Andy Moreton
The Taj Mahal Palace, as well as other luxury hotels in Mumbai, can be booked through Luxique.
I couldn’t let this week pass without expressing the shock felt by us all here at Luxique at the devastating terror attacks in Mumbai in which so many people lost their lives.
The Taj Mahal Palace, which was targeted by the terrorists and badly damaged, has always been one of our favourite hotels in the whole of India. Since it opened in 1903, the hotel has been a luxurious base for everyone from Maharajas and kings to film stars and international cricketers. To see this elegant and much-loved hotel reduced to a smoke-blackened wreck fills us with overwhelming sadness.
The Oberoi and Trident were also attacked and we send their owner, Mr P R S ‘Biki’ Oberoi, our sympathy. He said: “We were not lax in our security, but there is a limit to what an individual hotel can do in tightening security.” He felt that the concept of hospitality would change if guests were subjected to increased security checks.
Luxique sends condolences to all those who lost loved ones in the Mumbai assault.
by Andy Moreton
