ITC Grand Chola

On Mount Road in Guindy, between the airport and the city centre, ITC Grand Chola opened in 2012 with 600 keys, which makes it the largest luxury hotel in Chennai. ITC Hotels built it as a tribute to the Chola dynasty, the medieval rulers of the Tamil country whose temples at Thanjavur gave the building its carved granite vocabulary, and it holds LEED Platinum certification, one of the largest hotels in the world to do so.

History

ITC Hotels, the hospitality arm of the Kolkata-based ITC conglomerate, opened its Chennai flagship in September 2012 after several years of construction on an eight-acre site. It belongs to a line of ITC hotels named after Indian dynasties, after ITC Maurya in Delhi, ITC Mughal in Agra and ITC Grand Maratha in Mumbai. The company's rule for the group was that each house should draw on the architecture of its dynasty, and the Chola, whose temples at Thanjavur and Gangaikonda Cholapuram are World Heritage Sites, gave Chennai the richest source of all. ITC's sustainability programme, under which its hotels pursue LEED certification and renewable energy, shaped the engineering of the building from the outset.

Architecture and design

The hotel rises in a series of carved stone blocks around courtyards and gardens, with a facade of textured granite worked in the manner of Dravidian temple architecture. The entrance leads to a grand staircase and a lobby whose scale and finish are closer to a palace than a commercial hotel, with carved pillars and domed ceilings. Water, lawns and planted terraces separate the wings. The building's environmental design, from its glazing to its water recycling, earned it a LEED Platinum rating, a rare award for a property of this size.

Rooms and suites

ITC Grand Chola has 522 rooms and suites, together with 78 serviced apartments that bring the total to 600 keys. Rooms are grouped into wings by category, with the upper categories on dedicated floors with their own lounges. The hotel also sets aside rooms for women travelling alone, a feature introduced across ITC's hotels, and offers butler service in its upper categories.

Dining

Thirteen restaurants and bars make the hotel a destination for the city as much as for its guests. Peshawri serves the North-West Frontier cooking of ITC's Bukhara in Delhi, Royal Vega is a vegetarian restaurant drawing on India's royal kitchens, Ottimo Cucina Italiana covers Italy, and Madras Pavilion is the all-day restaurant. Avartana, opened in 2017, reinterprets South Indian cuisine in tasting menus and has become the most talked-about table in the hotel.

Wellness

Kaya Kalp, The Royal Spa, occupies its own wing with treatment rooms, a fitness centre and an outdoor pool.

Weddings and events

The hotel has 18 event spaces and can host up to 3,000 guests, with a pillar-free banquet hall that ranks among the largest in India. This capacity, the gardens and the proximity of the airport make it the default choice among luxury hotels in Chennai for large Indian weddings, national conferences and product launches that need one roof for the whole programme. Smaller boardrooms and a business centre handle meetings of ten to a hundred.

Location

The hotel stands on Anna Salai, still called Mount Road, in Guindy, close to the Guindy National Park and a few minutes from the Guindy railway and metro stations. Some six kilometres to the south-west lies Chennai International Airport, and the central business district around Anna Salai and the Marina are twenty to thirty minutes to the north depending on traffic.