500 Room Luxury Hotel Conversion For INS Viraat Aircraft Carrier

The proposal to convert India’s aircraft carrier, INS Viraat into a luxury hotel has got an approval by the Defence Ministry.

The decision was conveyed to the state officials on the sidelines of the International Fleet Review (IFR- 2016) at the coastal Andhra city of Visakhapatnam, Tribune reported Tuesday.

Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (APTDC) had proposed to convert the Centaur-class aircraft carrier into a hotel-cum-museum once it is decommissioned from service in June this year.

The state government has drawn up plans to convert Viraat into a 500-room hotel, the Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said. The warship would be docked at the shores of Visakhapatnam to serve as a tourist attraction.

“It will have 500 rooms and a conference hall to seat 500 people. Since it is an aircraft carrier, helicopters can easily land on it. It will be convenient to hold conferences apart from being a major tourist attraction,” the Chief Minister was quoted as saying.

Its conversion into a hotel-cum-ship museum will be jointly undertaken by Indian Navy and Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority (VUDA), with support from the central government to be taken up under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode.

The north coastal city is also home to INS Kursura, a Soviet-built decommissioned submarine, that has been converted into a museum in 2002. It is the first submarine museum in South Asia. It received 270,000 visitors in 2010, according to Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority, which maintains the museum ship.