Buy a fort – Sale in India!

Have the money to impress your loved one? May be its time to show and appreciate your wife/husband in a different gesture. Buy the havelis, elite houses in India and give them a home which is a palace. Eighty kilometres from Ajmer in Rajasthan, on a hillock overlooking the village below, stands the five-storey Badnor Fort.

Flanked by lakes Vinod Sagar and Akshay Sagar, the 500-year-old fort is up for grabs. The government of Rajasthan is ready to offer the 4.5-acre site on a 60-year lease for a 60- to 65-room heritage hotel to the highest bidder.

There's more available elsewhere in the state. In Udaipur, a private haveli-turned-heritage hotel is up for sale for Rs 6 crore (Rs 60 million).

In Nagore, an old fort with 35 rooms is on sale for Rs 5 crore (Rs 50 million). In Bundi, a 125-room fort can be bought for Rs 14 crore (Rs 140 million).

A 150-year-old village castle in Barmer with private stables and temples is available on a 15-year lease for Rs 5 lakh (Rs 500,000) a year.

Across Rajasthan, formed by the merger of 22 princely states after Independence, over a hundred forts, and hundreds of old havelis, have been put up for sale, lease or partnership by the government as well as private owners.

The prices range from as little as Rs 1 lakh (Rs 100,000) for a dilapidated haveli to Rs 35 crore (Rs 350 million) for a functional heritage hotel.

Aman Nath and Francis Wacziarg of Neemrana Hotels have done 24 heritage properties so far. The Indian Heritage Hotels Association, based in Jaipur, has 160 members across the country.

The business logic is simple. Foreigners love the heritage experience. The improvement in air connectivity and the road network has made Indian customers also look at such experiences with new interest.

At the top end of the heritage market are Falaknuma Palace in Hyderabad, Ram Bagh Palace in Jaipur, Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur and Shiv Niwas Palace in Udaipur.
Rooms here can cost up to Rs 25,000 a day. Most other heritage properties operate at Rs 3,500-8,000 a day.

S C Sekhar, senior executive vice president of ITC's hotels division, reckons a dilapidated fort takes five years to restore, while an in-use fort can be done in half the time. Restoration experts can charge from 0.5 per cent to 8 per cent of the total budget.

The restoration of the Falaknuma Palace took Indian Hotels Company close to 10 years and cost over Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million) per room!

The scale of the work can be daunting. Jal Mahal Resorts has signed a 99-year lease of Rs 2.5 crore (Rs 25 million) per year (15 per cent annual increase) with the Rajasthan government to develop 100 acres around Jal Mahal in Jaipur -- hotels, parks, et cetera.

In the last three years, it has spent Rs 65 crore (Rs 650 million) on restoring the Jal Mahal monument alone and the lake in which it is situated. The capacity of the lake has been increased and a drainage line and treatment plant set up.

It's not a seller's market. Last year, Rajasthan had wanted to lease out Badnor Fort for Rs 50 lakh a year. But converting it into a hotel would need at least Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million).

The fort built by Manumendra Shah in 1885 and expanded in 1910 when it hosted the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow. It was the summer resort of the Shahs. Unlike a modern hotel, where 60 per cent of the revenue is from room rent and the rest from food, "in a heritage hotel like mine, most of the revenue comes from room rent [Rs 5,000-8,300]," says Vikramjeet Singh of Kuchesar Mud Fort.

Source: http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show
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