Cover Marriott’s 10,000th hotel, JW Marriott Ranthambore, makes the case that a Rajasthan safari holiday can be about much more than the tiger (Photo: courtesy of JW Marriott Ranthambore)
Marriott’s 10,000th hotel, JW Marriott Ranthambore, makes the case that a Rajasthan safari holiday can be about much more than the tiger (Photo: courtesy of JW Marriott Ranthambore)
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Marriott chose JW Marriott Ranthambore, a tented resort beside a Rajasthan tiger reserve, rather than a big-city flagship, as its 10,000th hotel and its 11th JW Marriott in India, and the bet is that guests will come for far more than the safari
When Marriott International opened its 10,000th hotel this June, a milestone a company of its scale might have marked in London, New York or Dubai, it chose instead the edge of Ranthambore National Park in north-western India, outside Sawai Madhopur, a small Rajasthan town whose fortunes turn on its wild tigers. The choice says something about where luxury travel in India is heading. Wildlife holidays here have long belonged to small, specialist lodges built for photographers and repeat safari-goers, where the day is shaped entirely around the drives. A 127-key JW Marriott with an arcade, a pickleball court and a spa is a different proposition, aimed at families and multigenerational groups who want the forest as one part of a holiday rather than the whole of it.
The logic is simple once you see how a safari works. Drives run twice a day in open gypsies and canters on permits issued by the forest department, the routes are fixed, and a sighting is never guaranteed. For most visitors, the rest of the day has been a long wait between drives. The resort’s wager is that if those hours are filled well, the tiger becomes a bonus rather than the sole measure of the trip.
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Bird’s eye view of the hotel (Photo: courtesy of JW Marriott Ranthambore)
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The resort, owned by the Gadhiya family, an Indian business family led by Nilesh Gadhiya, spreads its rooms and private villas beneath pale tensile canopies that read as a permanent version of the royal shikar camps once pitched across this landscape. The interiors are by Ashton Design, the Singapore-based studio, which has drawn its palette from the surrounding terrain: red-brown stone walls, timber pergolas that throw striped shadows across grey marble, and planted courtyards that let the scrubland into the building rather than holding it at a distance.
I arrived on September 27, and the first afternoon showed how the resort means to fill its hours. Lunch was a Rajasthani spread at the Culinary School, and the moment it was over I went down to the water to feed the koi, some 3,000 of them moving through a long, wide pool alongside a handful of small sharks that patrol it like guards. It was there that I met Vivek Gomes Pereira, the resort’s general manager, who arrived with the observation that feeding koi is good vastu, the traditional Indian system of spatial harmony. Whatever one makes of that, I found it calming to stand by the water scattering feed, and it set the pace for the rest of the stay better than any welcome drink could have.
Inside the tented room (Photo: courtesy of JW Marriott Ranthambore)
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The afternoon continued with a walk through the property’s main spaces and an early-evening coffee at JW Market, the brand’s first grab-and-go in India, where the menu has been developed with Tiny Tiger Coffee, a specialty roaster. The evening programme also includes an introduction to the forest at the Safari Lounge with the resort’s resident naturalist, which sets up the next day’s drive with some of the history behind the landscape. Drinks are at Firepit, a sunken lounge built around an open fire, whose cocktail list has been developed with Lair, the Delhi bar regarded as one of the best in India. I started with a gin-based cocktail, but the highlight came later, when the bartenders made a betel leaf drink that is not on the menu, served as a digestive in the way paan has long closed a meal in this part of the country. Dinner followed outdoors at Roar, where the menu runs across almost every cuisine you could name, though the dish I will remember was the simplest on it: a dal khichdi so comforting that it outshone everything around it.
The second morning brought the part of the programme closest to my own beat: a pottery and bangle-making session at Firepit, which was a useful reminder that adornment in Rajasthan has always begun with the hand rather than the vitrine. Guests can follow it with an art walk alongside MD Parashar, the soot artist, whose works are built from layered carbon deposits and take the region’s wildlife as their subject. After a treatment at Spa by JW, which has six treatment rooms alongside steam, sauna and jacuzzi facilities and works from an Ayurvedic menu, lunch at Elan was a long, mimosa-led affair built around local produce. Then, at 3.30pm, the jeep. The park’s core zones close for the monsoon each year and reopened on October 1, a few days after my visit, so late-September drives run through the zones that stay open year-round.
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Skyloft bar (Photo: courtesy of JW Marriott Ranthambore)
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I came back from that drive unwell, and the rest of the evening went on without me. On paper it was the fullest stretch of the itinerary: an outdoor play arena with pickleball and soft archery, and Replay, the arcade and children’s zone with mini golf, a remote-control racing track and speed cricket. Dinner was to be at Skyloft, the signature bar and restaurant set 60 feet above the landscape, where the drinks list is developed with Native, a Jaipur cocktail bar, and the kitchen serves a modern reading of Rajasthani cooking.
What I saw instead was the side of a hotel that no itinerary describes. Ranthambore is some three hours by road from Jaipur, and falling ill in a remote place is the moment when a resort’s promises are tested most directly. The team sent meals to my room and came by to check on how I was doing, attentive without ever being intrusive, and it was that care, rather than any single venue, that left the deepest impression of the stay.
By the time I left on September 29, the resort’s case was clear. Ranthambore has never lacked for luxury lodges, and several have earned a loyal following among serious wildlife travellers. What JW Marriott has done differently is treat the safari as one element of a stay rather than its only justification, and back that with service that holds up when the plan does not. With the park now in its first full season since the opening, that approach is about to be tested by the travellers who matter most: those who come for the tiger and find reasons to stay that have nothing to do with it.
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As the Regional Editor for Watches and Jewellery and Editorial Content Lead for Tatler GMT, Amrita Katara specialises in luxury watch and jewellery coverage across Asia, with expertise in editorial strategy, feature writing and interviews with industry leaders. Her past roles span luxury lifestyle media and client partnerships. Based in Mumbai, Amrita’s work bridges global trends and Asian market insights.
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