Taj Mahal Palace Hotel - Wikipedia

Taj Hotels is a chain of luxury hotels and a subsidiary of the Indian Hotels Company Limited;[2] headquartered at Express Towers, Nariman Point in Mumbai.[3] Incorporated by the founder of the Tata Group, Jamsetji Tata, in 1903,[4][5] the company is a part of the Tata Group, one of India's largest business conglomerates. The company employed over 20,000 people in the year 2010.[6][7]

As of 2018, the company operates a total of 100 hotels and hotel-resorts, with 84 across India and 16 in other countries, including Bhutan, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, UAE, UK, USA and Zambia

History

Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (1839–1904), founded the Tata Group
Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, founder of the Tata Group, opened the Taj Mahal Palace, a hotel in Mumbai (formerly called Bombay) overlooking the Arabian Sea, on 16 December 1903. It was the first Taj property and the first Taj hotel. There are several anecdotal stories about why Tata opened the Taj hotel. According to a story, he decided to open the hotel after an incident involving racial discrimination at the Watson's Hotel in Mumbai, where he was refused entry as the hotel permitted only Europeans.[8] Hotels that accepted only European guests were very common across British India then. According to another story, he opened the hotel when one of his friends expressed disgust over the hotels that were present in Bombay then. But a more plausible reason was advanced by Lovat Fraser, a close friend of the Tata and one of the early directors of the IHCL group, that the idea had long been in his mind and that he had made a study on the subject. He did not have any desire to own a hotel but he wanted to attract people to India and to improve Bombay. It is said that Jamsetji Tata had travelled to places like London, Paris, Berlin, and Düsseldorf to arrange for materials and pieces of art, furniture and other interior decor for his hotel.[9] The Taj group has since then developed and flourished, under the Tata Group.