Lakhmichand Lulla: Dubai’s first hotelier

The spring in Lakhmichand Lulla’s step belies his age.

Though Dubai’s first hotelier has turned 78, he remains as active as ever, unfailingly doing the rounds of the Ambassador Hotel, the city’s oldest existing hotel, which he founded in 1968.

XPRESS caught up with ‘Lakho’, as he is affectionately called by friends and family, to hear his side of the story.

Heady days

Recounting those heady days, Lulla said that he was just 24 when he first arrived in Sharjah from Mumbai in 1954.

Lulla was recruited as an executive at the Sharjah airport and later joined Dubai airport.

Those initial years shaped his idea of starting the Airlines Hotel in 1958. "Actually that was Dubai’s first hotel," he recalls, even as the Ambassador Hotel continues to be described as "the first brick in the city’s hospitality industry".

Speaking of those days, he recounted that dredging work on Dubai Creek had just begun then.

The first clients of the hotel were officers from British and American companies engaged in projects such as the Al Maktoum Bridge and Maktoum Hospital.

The eight-room Airlines Hotel grew to a 36-room facility, but was closed in 1981.

However, by then, the Ambassador Hotel had already come up and Lulla started another hotel called Astoria – again in Bur Dubai, in 1978.

The 45-room Ambassador with views of the seafront remained, for many years, the point of reference to gauge the beginning or end of the town.

First structure

"It was the first structure people saw as they came in from the sea or looked outward towards the waters," said the hotel doyen.

British bands played there, while European families took to the dance floor, he reminisced.

Some of the staff from those days have remained and grown with the hotel. Pervez Khan who is the personnel manager today, started off as a bellhop when he arrived here 47 years ago from Peshawar, Pakistan. At 75 he remains Lulla’s oldest employee.

A patron speaks

 "It was in the late ’70s. I was 29 then. I used to go to the Ambassador and remember spending many a evening there. At that time, it was frequented mostly by British men and their wives. The décor was simple, with soft music playing through the day. The only landmark nearby was the Dubai Plaza theatre."

Lucas D’Souza, Mumbai, India