art of travel

In the last quarter alone of 2025, I have seen fourteen “India’s Best New Hotel Opening” headlines cross my desk. By June, we will have forgotten at least twelve of them. Yet what separates the forgettable from what actually matters is rarely discussed.

When my guests invest two weeks and significant money to experience India, they are not just booking rooms. They are trusting us to show them places that matter. So, when the industry announces another “best opening”, I find myself asking a far more important question: best for whom, and best by what standards?

The truth is, most hotel opening announcements avoid the fundamental question altogether. Does this property change anything?

What Should Actually Make Us Pay Attention?

After three decades of watching hotels open and close across India, I have learned what separates genuine game-changers from properties that simply add more rooms to a destination. A property deserves the “best opening” label only when it achieves at least two of the following four outcomes.

1. It Resurrects Forgotten Heritage

I am not talking about another “palace hotel”. I mean properties that genuinely preserve architecture, memory, and culture in the process.

Relais & Châteaux’s Ran Bas in Patiala, Punjab, is a perfect example. This property brought back a lesser-known strand of royal heritage that had been largely forgotten. The result is not just a hotel. It is a preservation success story that gives my guests access to Punjabi aristocracy that was previously inaccessible. Patiala is just four hours from Amritsar and two hours from Chandigarh. Anandpur Sahib, the venue of the Hola Mohalla Festival, can also be woven into this circuit.

2. It Creates Destinations, Not Just Fills Them

The properties that matter are the ones that make my guests rethink their India itinerary entirely.

Sawantwadi Palace in Maharashtra is a textbook case of destination creation. This is not simply a restored palace. It is a property that single-handedly put an unknown town on the travel map. Before it opened, how many international travellers had even heard of Sawantwadi?

They did not just restore a building. They revived the nearly extinct craft of Ganjifa card-making and brought the Sawantwadi school of painting back from the brink. When my guests stay here, they are not consuming heritage. They are actively helping preserve it while exploring a corner of Maharashtra that would otherwise stay off most travellers’ itineraries. Sawantwadi Palace also makes for a wonderful stop between the ancient cave temples of Badami in Karnataka and the beaches of Goa.

amã Stays & Trails Anand Bhawan in Tirwa does something similar for Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh. This restored 1929 zamindari palace gives my guests access to India’s perfume capital, a town known for centuries for its traditional attar-making using the ancient distillation technique. Guests can visit artisan workshops, learn about the craft of natural perfumery that has defined Kannauj’s identity, and experience a dimension of Indian culture that would otherwise remain completely inaccessible to them. Anand Bhawan is located between Lucknow and Agra.

3. It Builds Geographic Bridges

Some properties do something far more valuable than offering luxury. They create new travel logic.

Belgadia Palace is my favourite example of this. This restored hunting lodge in Mayurbhanj, Odisha, solved what was once considered an impossible journey. The 450-kilometre drive between Kolkata and Bhubaneswar was long regarded as unworkable. Guests either flew or endured an uncomfortable overnight train.

Belgadia Palace changed that. It now functions as a natural two-night pause, transforming a logistical problem into a destination experience.

Postcard’s Durrung Tea Estate does the same for the Northeast. It acts as the missing anchor in an otherwise fragmented region.

With Hollongi Airport in Arunachal Pradesh now operational with daily nonstop flights from Delhi and Kolkata, Durrung enables an entirely new routing: fly into Arunachal Pradesh, explore Nameri National Park, experience tea heritage at Durrung, then continue to Kaziranga National Park before departing from Jorhat, which also has direct flights to Delhi and Kolkata. Guests can even include a multi-day private cruise on the River Brahmaputra after Kaziranga, without ever needing to pass through Guwahati.

What was previously a puzzle of disconnected destinations becomes a seamless journey combining tea, culture, wildlife, and river life.

What would make this circuit truly complete is a property at Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary which is home to over 450 bird species including the critically endangered Bugun Liocichla, discovered only in 2006 and found nowhere else on earth. A well-designed property here, positioned between Durrung and Nameri, would transform this already compelling Northeast circuit into what could genuinely become India’s premier nature and culture journey.

4. It Alters Economic and Cultural Trajectories

This is the hardest outcome to measure, but arguably the most important. Does the opening of a property fundamentally change how a destination functions?

Consider The Oberoi Rajgarh Palace in Khajuraho. It has only just opened, so it is too early to assess its full impact. What makes it genuinely exciting, however, is its potential to transform how we approach Khajuraho altogether.

The meticulously restored 350-year-old palace sits on a 76-acre estate with easy access to both the UNESCO World Heritage temples of Khajuraho and Panna National Park, which now has over 90 tigers following one of India’s most successful conservation efforts.

This dual access is very interesting for travel planners. Properties that allow guests to meaningfully engage with both culture and nature, extending a one-night stop into a three- or four-night stay, fundamentally change what we can deliver.

It would be unfair not to acknowledge that this culture-and-nature logic is not entirely new to the region. The Sarai at Toria, a small, thoughtfully run boutique lodge on the banks of the Ken River, has been doing this for years. Hosts Raghu and Joanna have long encouraged guests to slow down, engage with village life, explore Panna’s wildlife, and treat Khajuraho as more than a temple stop, showing how a longer, more meaningful stay in this region can work.

What makes the opening of The Oberoi Rajgarh Palace particularly interesting is not that it introduces this idea, but that it has the potential to scale it for a very different audience by providing easy access to both the temples of Khajuraho and the wildlife of Panna from a single luxury base.

Red Panda Outpost in Jaubari, Nepal, opened by Pugdundee Safaris in November 2025, demonstrates a similar principle in an entirely different context. This six-room conservation homestay at 9,400 feet near Singalila National Park solves a problem that has long kept this experience out of reach for many travellers: until now, tracking red pandas in this critical habitat meant roughing it out in basic conditions that simply did not work for most of our guests.

This property changes that equation entirely. It makes a transboundary biodiversity corridor meaningfully accessible with a level of comfort and hospitality that finally works for our guests, while maintaining genuine conservation credentials. Accessible via Bagdogra Airport in India or Bhadrapur Airport in Nepal, guests can now explore habitat that is home to endangered red pandas, Himalayan black bears, clouded leopards, and over 300 bird species, with panoramic views extending to Kanchenjunga and Mount Everest on clear days.

What sets this property apart is not just the improved comfort level, but the strength of its on-ground team and its authentic commitment to conservation-led tourism.

The property also creates new routing possibilities. It now enables a compelling Eastern Himalayas circuit connecting Darjeeling’s tea heritage with the wildlife and culture of Assam, creating a cohesive journey through a region that has long been fragmented for international travellers.

So, What Is My Benchmark?

When evaluating new openings for our itineraries, I ask a simple question: will this property still matter in five years?

Not whether it will still be operating, or whether it will maintain its luxury standards, but whether it will remain relevant to the story we are telling about India.

Sawantwadi Palace will matter because it preserved cultural knowledge and created a destination from nothing. Anand Bhawan in Tirwa and Ranbas in Patiala will matter because they resurrected lesser-known strands of regional aristocracy and made them meaningfully accessible to travellers. Belgadia Palace will matter because it solved a geographic puzzle. Postcard Durrung will matter because it opened an entire region to meaningful exploration. The Oberoi Rajgarh Palace will matter because it has the potential to scale one of India’s most compelling culture-and-wilderness combinations from a single luxury base. Red Panda Outpost will matter because it made a previously inaccessible conservation experience viable for travellers who would not have considered it otherwise.

The lobby with the dramatic chandelier, or the private infinity pool overlooking a valley? Unless it is part of a deeper story, it will not matter at all.

I am watching a handful of 2026 openings with genuine interest, particularly those emerging in lesser-known destinations. Two properties opening in Mandu, Madhya Pradesh, stand out: the Jehanuma Family, known for their hospitality in Bhopal and the Reni Pani wildlife lodge near Satpura National Park, is bringing their signature warmth to this medieval city. Evolve Back, which has built its reputation on experiential luxury at properties in Coorg, Hampi, and Kabini, is also entering Mandu. These properties have the potential to reshape how we design India itineraries, not by being more luxurious, but by creating new reasons to stay longer in places travellers once rushed through or ignored entirely.

Beautiful rooms are now table stakes. The real question is whether a property gives my guests a reason to spend four days somewhere they had never previously considered.

When we design itineraries for our guests, we are not chasing the newest opening. We are asking a different question: will this place still matter when my guests are planning their next visit to India? Will they talk about the destination, not just the hotel?

That is what “best” should mean. Not the most expensive, not the most Instagrammed, and not the one with the loudest PR. The best opening is the one that, five years from now, we cannot imagine India travel without.

These are exactly the conversations we enjoy having with our overseas partners when we think about how India should be experienced, now and in the years ahead. As always, I welcome your thoughts. If you have experienced a property that genuinely changed how you see a destination in India, I would love to hear about it.