How Ananta Hotels & Resorts Is Defining the Future of Indian Luxury Travel

Picture this: you wake up to the Aravallis at first light, the air carrying the kind of silence that cities have forgotten. By mid-morning, you're tracking pugmarks through Sariska. By evening, you're sitting around a fire in a villa built from earth and bamboo, the fort ruins visible in the distance. This isn't a fantasy itinerary. It's a Tuesday at Ajabgarh.

This is what Ananta Hotels & Resorts has spent decades building toward —an experience rooted in landscape, shaped by the traditions of the places it sits within, and designed for people who travel to feel something.

Founded on the conviction that fresh air, sunlight and trees are nourishment for the body, mind and soul, the group was established by patriarch Mukund Goyal and has since grown into a diverse portfolio of properties rooted in place. From the 98-acre expanse of The Ananta Udaipur to the tiger corridors of Ranthambore, the Asiatic lion country of Gir, and the newest jewel in its crown, Ananta Spa and Resort in Ajabgarh, the group now spans over a dozen properties across Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa and Himachal Pradesh. Underpinning all of it is a single conviction: that wildlife, wellness and celebration are not three separate businesses — they are three ways of describing what happens when the right landscape is properly served.

Robb Report India spoke to Ashutosh Goyal and Mohit Goyal, directors of Ananta Hotels & Resorts, about three of the biggest shifts reshaping travel in India right now.

Wildlife Tourism

The comparison to Africa is the first place any serious conversation about Indian wildlife tourism tends to go, and Ashutosh meets it without defensiveness. "India is not trying to be Africa, and that's precisely its advantage." Africa, he argues, built a compelling story around a specific experience: the open savannah, the Big Five, the sundowner, the storytelling that makes the whole thing feel like a rite of passage. It is, by any measure, an extraordinary product. But India offers something different in kind. "India offers density, mythology and civilisational context," he says.

At Baagh Ananta Elite in Ranthambore, the walls carry copper and wood, tiger motifs woven into the interiors so the forest follows you inside. You don't leave the experience at the jeep — you carry it back to your room, to dinner, to the next morning. At Ajabgarh, the villas are built from the land itself — fire pits, bamboo, earth walls, water features — so that the boundary between where the wild ends and where you begin becomes pleasantly hard to locate.

On conservation, Mohit is candid about where the industry stands. "Most properties near tiger reserves or national parks operate with good intentions but without measurable frameworks." Ananta has taken steps — over 50,000 trees planted annually, a plastic-free commitment within four years, a target to increase women in the workforce to 25 per cent by 2026 — but he acknowledges the larger gap. "The industry needs standardised reporting, third-party audits and a collective willingness to be held accountable. Intention is no longer enough."

Wellness Travel

India gave the world its wellness vocabulary — yoga, Ayurveda, meditation, pranayama — the entire philosophical foundation on which a $5 trillion global wellness economy is now built. And yet the story of what to do with it has been told elsewhere. "India invented the vocabulary of wellness but we've let others write the luxury chapter," says Ashutosh. "Bali, Thailand and Switzerland have packaged wellness into aspirational, design-led experiences while India, with a few exceptions, still operates in the ashram-or-spa binary."

The missing piece, he believes, is a willingness to think about the whole experience — the architecture, the programming, the service — as one coherent thing rather than a checklist.

At Ajabgarh, that thinking is visible in the walls. Earth Suites are built from mud and clay — cool to the touch and grounding underfoot. Lagoon Villas face the water, designed for stillness. The Aravallis enforce a natural calm that no noise-cancelling headphone has yet managed to replicate. All of it, as Mohit puts it, is part of "the prescription."

Mohit sees three areas where India could make a strong case for itself. Digital detox, where landscapes like Ajabgarh do the work naturally, requiring little more than the absence of a signal. Ayurvedic longevity, where centuries of documented practice in Rasayana — the science of rejuvenation — needs only the right setting and the right practitioners. And spiritual wellness, grounded in places like Pushkar, Rishikesh and the temple towns of South India — contexts that no manufactured retreat elsewhere can replicate. Getting there, though, remains part of the challenge. Ashutosh says, "A global wellness traveller will not tolerate a six-hour taxi ride on a broken road, regardless of how transformative the destination is."

Destination Weddings

Rajasthan has long been the default canvas for the grand Indian destination wedding — palaces, forts, pageantry. The appeal is well established and shows no sign of fading. What is shifting, though, is what couples actually want from these settings, and the change is forcing hospitality groups to think well beyond the ballroom.

"The modern couple is no longer a passive client," says Mohit. "They arrive with mood boards, Pinterest references and a clear sense of aesthetic identity." At Ananta, wedding conversations now centre on sight lines, lighting temperatures, acoustic quality of outdoor spaces and the sustainability of floral sourcing. The properties have been designed, intentionally, to hold that ambition.

The Ananta Udaipur unfolds across 98 acres in a way that makes a thousand weddings feel like one — each celebration held in its own pocket of the property, private and unhurried. At Pushkar, the rose gardens and the lake add to the beauty. And at Ajabgarh, the fort ruins make their alluring presence felt. "The fort isn't a backdrop; it's a living ruin that gives the celebration a sense of time and place." Ashutosh's view on where the market needs to go is characteristically direct: "Rajasthan doesn't need more wedding venues. It needs more distinct ones."

The Bigger Picture

What connects wildlife, wellness and weddings is the same underlying shift: people are no longer just booking a hotel — they're choosing an experience that reflects how they want to live, even if only for a few days. They want to know that the people behind it have thought carefully about the land.

For Ananta, that isn't a recent realisation — it's been the starting point since the beginning. "We don't build resorts and then add nature as an amenity," says Mohit. "We find landscapes worth protecting and then design hospitality that serves them." Ashutosh puts the broader opportunity plainly: India doesn't need to look elsewhere for a template. It already has everything it needs.

That, for Ananta Hotels & Resorts, is the present for Indian hospitality.