Great Eastern Hotel’s new avatar unveiled

HISTORIC SHIFT 173-year-old landmark was the first disinvestment by the former Left Front government

KOLKATA: A living piece of history was unveiled in Kolkata on Tuesday when chief minister Mamata Banerjee formally relaunched the 173-year-old Great Eastern Hotel — reputed to be the first luxury hotel of Asia — as Lalit Great Eastern.
SUBHENDU GHOSH / HT Change of guard: Old grandeur in new hands Built over an area of nearly three acres, the hotel has three blocks — New Block, Heritage Block I and Heritage Block II.
There are 244 rooms and suites, a tea lounge, a bakery, a beer bar, Maxim’s bar and restaurant and Baluchi — the signature Indian restaurant. The hotel also boasts of a 8,000-sq-feet ballroom, a business club with four meeting rooms, a spa, gymnasium, salon, swimming pool and a two-level parking space to accommodate at least 150 cars.

“The hotel is however waiting for some of the licences required to operate a luxury hotel, one of them being a liquor licence. Apart from this, the Heritage Block I is still under restoration. Once these works are completed, we would be throwing it open for citizens,” said a hotel spokesperson.
Exactly 173 years ago, an Englishman David Wilson, encouraged by the success of his thriving confectionary shop in Kolkata, launched a hotel on November 19, 1840 and named it Auckland Hotel after the then governor general.
Popularly known as the Wilson’s Hotel till 1865, it was renamed as the Great Eastern Hotel thereafter, and was the first disinvestment by the former Left Front government.
“In 1883 it became the country’s first hotel to be fully illuminated with electricity and was the favourite haunt of the elite including Queen Elizabeth II, Mahatma Gandhi, Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain, among others. Twain had even referred to it as the Jewel of the East,” said Jyotsna Suri, managing director of Bharat Hotels that now owns the hotel.
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