The story of the hotel began in 1942 when construction on it was started by the father-son duo of Sujan Singh and Sir Sobha Singh as a residence. The grandfather and father of the veteran journalist Khushwant Singh, they were the principal contractors who executed a majority of Edwin Lutyens' ideas.During the course of the process, the duo bought a swathe of land across Delhi.
The house became one of the earliest hotel properties in New Delhi when it was leased and converted in 1950 by Ram Prasad, an adviser to Jawaharlal Nehru. It quickly became a hotspot for the city's large expatriate community and hosted most of the Indian royal families of that time. The royal family of Indore even had a suite permanently reserved for them and a banquet was hosted for the visiting King of Saudi Arabia in 1955-56.
There are also mentions in numerous accounts such as the one by American diplomat Carl R Fritz. In a journal of his tenure in India, Fritz writes on December 5, 1951: "We proceeded to the newly built Ambassador Hotel located in a fairly new section of New Delhi.
On the way we encountered numerous small shacks made of straw, bamboo, and mud. These dotted empty lots and even sections of paved streets and housed refugees from the dreadful events of Partition, families not yet able to find housing."
The hotel's builders themselves came to India thanks to the partition and the site is today named after the eldest Singh. In 1990, its operations were taken over by the Taj Group Of Hotels. The Taj Group gave it a new business avataar. Its ambience today offers all the services that a corporate traveller needs. The dining experience now consists of the bar H2O and the restaurants Larry's China and Yellow Brick Road.
The 88 rooms were priced between Rs 75 and Rs 100 in the 1950s and when the Taj took over, the rates hovered between Rs 400 and Rs 500. "Today the seasonal tariff is about Rs 11,000," says Varun Bharadwaj, Sales Manager, The Ambassador Hotel.
