TripAdvisor’s #1 hotel in the world
There’s nothing like the royal touch for bringing in tourists — or for providing the glitz needed to be named number one. It certainly hasn’t hurt the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur, India, listed by TripAdvisor as the best hotel in the world in 2016. As in the UK, where the royal family in 2015 brought in tourism revenues of $760 million, India’s regal past is also proving profitable. That’s a relief for the palace’s founding family, who turned to tourism after India’s government de-recognized royal titles and ended their privileges in the 1970s. Stripped of an official income, they decided to turn the palace — originally built between 1928 and 1943 as a private residence for Maharaja Umaid Singh — into a hotel. But not before almost losing it.
“It was considered wrong for a king or royal family to indulge in business,” Gaj Singh, Umaid Singh’s grandson, tells CNN. “You enforce business and you run the state. When independence came, and we didn’t have a state, we had no source of income.”
News source: edition.cnn.com
You might also like
Jordan Tourism Board kicks off 2016 with the ETAA Mega Meet
SATTE 2016 began on a high note for the Jordan tourism Board as it partnered with the Enterprising Travel Agent’s Association, (ETAA a professional association representing the retail tour operator
World’s rarest Macaws to debut at Jurong Bird Park
Jurong Bird Park will be the only public zoological institution where visitors can view all three remaining blue macaw species – Spix’s, Lear’s, and Hyacinth macaws. Come end-November, local and
National Geographic Encounter to open Ocean Odyssey from October 6, 2017
First-of-its-Kind Entertainment Experience Pushes the Boundaries of Visual Effects with 20-Foot Long Sharks, a 50-Foot Humpback Whale, Life-Size Battling Humboldt Squids and More National Geographic Encounter will open to the
