THE Leela Palace in Delhi has reason to be happy. The 24th annual issue of the Robb Report’s Best of the Best for 2012 has put it on its list of hotels, along with the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong, the Corinthia in London and the Mandarin Oriental in Paris. There is also a flattering write up about the establishment and yesterday the Leela Mumbai held a press conference about the development.
We should also point out that the Robb Report’s Best of the Best for 2012 has a total of 180 awardees, ranging from automobiles to yachts and everything in between. Even so, the 180 are considered the last word in luxury, aimed at the affluent spender, while the magazine itself is the ultimate authority on the luxury lifestyle.
How luxurious? Here’s an idea from its pages for the dutiful son (or daughter) who wants to send his mother roses for Mother’s Day.
You don’t just send any rose; you contact the establishment called the Ultimate Rose and order a bouquet of six-feet-tall roses. A dozen roses will set you back by the equivalent of around Rs.13,145, before delivery.
Or you could go in for the limited edition Mother’s Day bouquet of a dozen three-feet-tall roses in white, pink, yellow, and peach at $129. The colossal roses, grown on a 100-acre farm of greenhouses atop the Andes Mountains, take about four months to reach their full size, and they bloom to the size of a plump orange, more than twice the size of a standard rose.
Standard-sized, stem-dyed roses, in which even the tiniest, innermost petals are each a different color come from $69 for a dozen, and then there is the Extravaganza, a two-dozen bouquet of six-feet roses in a 34-inch-tall vase for $695. Do the math yourself.