Going on holiday: Heritage hotels define Goan hospitality

 

PANAJI: If you've planned a weekend on a north Goa beach, the tour guide will probably lead you to Siolim House, a heritage hotel which is quite unlike a hotel. There is no reception, liveried waiters, air-conditioning or piped music. Yet, when Kate Moss visited Goa a couple of years ago, she put up there. So what is it about Goa's restored old manors that attract celebrities and commoners alike?

 

"We are no competition to star hotels. What we offer is an earthy charm," says Varun Sood, who bought Siolim House, a 300-year-old manor which was home to the governor of Macau in 1996.

 

Secluded and antiquated, the manors provide privacy, quaint charm and an aristocratic feel - an alternative to the monotony of standard star hotel fare. Realising their commercial potential, inheritors of the properties and a few entrepreneurs have converted them into heritage hotels for the discerning tourist.

 

"Of its 22 originally habitable rooms, there are only seven. But that doesn't take away the charm," says Sood, who also bought the Solar Souto Maior in Old Goa, a manor built in 1585. It belonged to the Souto Maior family, of Spanish royal descent, who arrived in Goa in the 16th century.

 

In Ribandar, near Old Goa, is Solar dos Colacos, the residence of the Colacos, a noble family. Built between 1745 and 1824, the baroque mansion once had British and German charter tourists as visitors. Its east wing has a ballroom and a minstrel gallery. A piece of furniture in the mansion has a carved sideboard depicting scenes from the Ramayana. "This is the only piece of furniture pointing to the Hindu origins of the Colacos," says Tony Bothelo, a relative of the Colacos who lives in Ribandar.

 

"The USP of the house is that it faces the Mandovi, which flows past Old Goa, Ribandar and Panaji. There used to be a floating platform across the house for passengers to disembark from canoes," says Bothelo, who has revived the tradition. Today, tourists arrive by boat to dine at the Solar dos Colacos.

 

Says Maria de Lourdes Figueiredo de Albuquerque, part owner of a huge Loutolim mansion facing vast green rice fields, "I live in Lisbon and routinely come down here for visits. I converted my portion of the mansion into a five-room hotel." Maria inherited about 40 per cent of the huge Figueiredo Mansion.

 

Maria has made optimum use of the mansion's artifacts to attract visitors. "I offer visitors guided porcelain tours. There is a lot of furniture from Macau, chandeliers from France, glassware from Belgium and Chinaware." To that, she added four leather chairs that she brought from Portugal. Maria cooks Portuguese food for guests.

 

The trend of converting old mansions into hotels started much before. Claudio Menezes Braganza, who spends six months a year in Brazil, threw open his 16th century mansion a little over two decades ago.

 

With a built-up area of 3,600 square metres, it is practically a museum of Indo-Portuguese heritage. The mansion has a ballroom, a library with 5,000 books and 24 balconies. "Among its charms," says Braganza, "are Carrara marble from Italy and chandeliers from Belgium.”