Is Tata link too-too much for Wills and Kate’s India tour?
Royal couple turn down steel family’s £9,500-a-night suite
THERE could hardly be a more fitting place for the opulent opening reception of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s tour of India than the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.
For the luxurious venue is owned by a family with close links to British industry that have come under the spotlight of late – the Tatas.
William and Kate are to stay at the hotel on arrival in Mumbai, as they kick off their week-long official tour of India and Bhutan today. Remarkably, however, I am told that the couple will not be meeting Tata chairman Cyrus Mistry or any of the Tata family at the £25,000-atable charity dinner they are hosting this evening. And the Duke and Duchess have also turned down the chance to stay in the hotel’s grand presidential suite – a room reserved for visiting royalty, world leaders or members of the Tata family.
Their mysterious decision to avoid the £9,500-a-night, 15-room suite has prompted speculation that the Royal couple were put off by its unfortunate name – the Tata suite. After a year of awkward PR disasters, they could hardly afford to have their names linked so closely to a family which is preparing to sell off its entire UK steel operation at the potential cost of thousands of British jobs.
Nor did they feel comfortable staying in the most luxurious suite in the Tata-owned hotel – even though it was good enough for American President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle.
So instead, the Duke and Duchess – who are travelling without their two young children – are practically slumming it by opting for a ‘normal’ £700-a-night suite at the hotel, where even the most basic of accommodation is over and above most people’s wildest dreams.
The venue is opposite the Gateway of India which was erected to commemorate the visit of William’s great-great-grandparents, King George V and Queen Mary, in 1911.
Kate and William will meet 150 members of the so-called ‘Boligarch set’ at tonight’s gala, including Bollywood A-listers such as Bride And Prejudice actress Aishwarya Rai – India’s answer to Angelina Jolie.
But although several representatives from the Tata group will be at the gala dinner, the Royal couple will not be meeting anyone from Tata Steel.