You may not know what Michelin keys are. They are the hotel equivalent of Michelin stars with pretty much the same philosophy: Anonymous inspections by professionals who pay their own way; three keys are the hotel equivalent of three stars for restaurants; and so on.
Until recently the keys were announced in the same way as the stars with local ceremonies. But a week ago, in a break with tradition, Michelin announced ratings for thousands of hotels around the world.
Among them were some Indian hotels. As the idea behind the keys is to recognize excellence at all price points, there were some surprises but there was also widespread agreement over the two hotels that won three keys.
Both are palace hotels run by the Taj group: Hyderabad’s Falaknuma and Udaipur’s legendary Lake Palace. And both deserve their three keys.
The palace hotel is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon. There are château hotels in Europe but few of them were built by ruling princes. Many of the Indian princes who built hotels ran kingdoms that were the size of European countries. And because there was no single architectural style that the maharajas and nawabs followed, the palaces represent a merging of Indian and western influences that makes them unique.
The idea of turning palaces into hotels was originally Dr Karan Singh’s. He was always an unusual maharaja. His kingdom in Kashmir was vast and till the end of the 1960s he was what was then known as a ruling maharaja, without political power but entitled to use the honorific His Highness, fly his own flag, pay no income tax and get a privy purse from the government.
Except that he wanted none of these things. He avoided using his title, urged people to call him Dr Karan Singh and tried to move away from the trappings of power and royalty.
The magnificent royal palace in Srinagar was one such trapping. He did not want to stay in it so he handed it over to the Oberoi group and let them run it as the Oberoi Palace, India’s first palace hotel.
Other maharajas had the same idea. The Jaipur royal family moved out of the Rambagh Palace and ran it as a hotel. The Maharana of Udaipur kept his own palace but turned the Lake Palace, a pleasure palace in the middle of the lake, into a hotel.
Sadly, the maharajas were not good hoteliers, and their palace hotels lost money. In the late 1960s Maharaja Sawai Man Singh of Jaipur came to the Taj group (at that stage the whole group consisted of just the Bombay hotel) and asked it to take the Rambagh over. A little later Maharana Bhagwat Singh of Udaipur came to the Taj with the same request.
The Taj looked at both hotels and figured out what was wrong. Apart from the lack of professional management both hotels had too few rooms to be viable and in any case, nobody was selling them to foreign tourists.
When the Taj took over the Lake Palace, it made an unusual request to the Maharana. It wanted to construct a new block of rooms within the compound of the palace. The Taj promised the Maharana that the new rooms would be skillfully merged with the old ones. Against all odds it kept its word. I always ask people who go to the Lake Palace if they can tell which is the new wing and which is the original 1760 construction. I have yet to find a visitor who can tell the difference.
The Taj has always run the Lake Palace well and after significant competition appeared in the shape of the Oberoi Udai Vilas across the lake it spruced up the property even further. More recently the team of Puneet Chhatwal who runs the Taj and the current Maharana has worked tirelessly to make it one of the world’s best hotels. The Michelin keys prove that they have succeeded.
The Falaknuma Palace which also got three keys has a more complicated history. It was originally built by a Raja in Hyderabad who used a British architect to create a structure that merged Hyderabadi tradition with English country house design with the overwhelming influence of Andrea. Palladio, the Venetian architect beloved of the British aristocracy.
The Nizam of Hyderabad came to stay and said he liked it. Custom demanded that the Raja present it to him and the Nizam accepted. He did not move in himself but used it as a royal guest house hosting the King of England, the Tsar of Russia and others.
Around 1950 or so after Hyderabad acceded to the Indian Union, he had less use for a state guesthouse and the building fell into a state of disrepair.
Its ownership passed to Princess Ezra, one of the wives of a later Nizam, and she convinced the Taj to turn it into a hotel. It took the Taj over ten years to just fix the building before the restoration of the interior could progress.
I remember attending the slightly chaotic opening in 2010 and being startled by what a great job the Taj had done. It is a palace like no other and I think Michelin spotted that which is why it got the highest honour. Even so, I think the Rambagh was unlucky to miss out: It is very much a three key hotel.
In all the fuss about the Taj group’s spectacular expansion, the jump in its profitability and its rocketing share price we sometimes miss how its palace hotels are not just among the best hotels in the world but they are also historical monuments that preserve memories of an India that once was.
As I always say, it’s not enough for a hotel group to run good hotels. At its best properties you must have a sense of place and the hospitality must tether you to the history and glory of our country.
