Luxury Hotels Atlas / The Maison / CGH Earth

CGH Earth hotels

Kerala’s ancestral houses, village building methods and regional food shape daily life for guests.

CGH Earth makes the traditions of southern India part of the stay, with ancestral houses, regional cooking, and settings that can begin with an arrival by boat. The Dominic family’s Kerala collection ranges from a one-suite palace at Chittoor to Coconut Lagoon’s wooden houses and a Chettiar mansion in Kanadukathan, keeping the experience close to the architecture and daily life around it.

9 CGH Earth hotels in 1 country on the Luxury Hotels Atlas, each placed on the six LHA Tiers.

• Owned by the Dominic family
• Worldwide: 26 operating hotel, lodge, and wellness-retreat properties enumerated on the official September 2026 locator; Spice Coast Cruises, private villas, and Ayurveda/nature-cure hospitals are excluded. Official CGH Earth locator
• On the atlas: 1 High Luxury, 5 Core Luxury, 3 Accessible Luxury

History

CGH Earth’s early resorts drew on the villages around them, from Bangaram’s thatch to Spice Village’s elephant-grass roofs and food of the hills. Coconut Lagoon took the idea further by saving timber tharavads from Kuttanad and reassembling them beside the backwaters. Those ancestral houses give the stay a direct connection to Kerala’s domestic architecture.

Timeline

• c. 1895 — George Brunton & Sons establish a shipyard on the Fort Kochi quay that later becomes Brunton Boatyard
• 1957 — Dominic Joseph and his partners open the Casino restaurant in Kochi. A partner just back from Naples suggests the name. The restaurant claims Kerala's first tandoor.
• 1967 — Casino has grown into a 32-room hotel on Willingdon Island.
• 1977 — Jose Dominic leaves A.F. Ferguson in Mumbai and joins his father in the family hotel.
• 1988 — After Rajiv Gandhi's 1987 holiday on Bangaram, Casino wins a 25-year contract for India's first island resort and opens it on 18 December. The advertisement offers nature, and leaves off television, air-conditioning, and a multi-cuisine restaurant.
• 1991 — Spice Village opens at Thekkady: cottages in the manner of the Mannan people, roofed in elephant grass, in a spice garden beside Periyar Tiger Reserve.
• 1992 — The group leases the abandoned Brunton yard from the Cochin Port Trust.
• 1993 — Coconut Lagoon opens at Kumarakom. Tharavad houses that families were dismantling are moved, in pieces, onto Vembanad and rebuilt.
• Late 1990s — Spice Coast Cruises follows, a houseboat built for the group by Babu Varghese, then Marari Beach at Mararikulam, then Brunton Boatyard, which opens in August 1999
• 2004 — The group is renamed CGH Earth: Clean, Green and Healthy Earth. The Kollengode palace is taken on lease as Kalari Kovilakom, an Ayurveda hospital run to the family's rules (no meat, no alcohol, no leather footwear inside), and later receives NABH accreditation.
• 2005 — Architect Latha Raman Jaigopal strengthens Chittoor Kottaram for the royal owner, Suresh Namboothiri.
• 2006 — Architects' project timeline for Chittoor Kottaram as a single-key hotel. The atlas founding year matches this date.
• 2007 — CGH Earth restores Visalam, the 1939 Chettiar wedding house in Kanadukathan, and opens it to guests.
• 2010 — CGH Earth vice president Mridula Jose later dates the Chittoor lease to this year. The restoration architects record a nomination for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
• 2013 — Palais de Mahé opens on Rue de Bussy in Puducherry's White Town.
• 2015–2018 — Lady Helen Hamlyn leases Chittoor Kottaram and, with architect Minakshi Jain, completes a second restoration published in 2018: the old pond becomes a laterite pool, the verandah is widened, a waterfront gazebo is added.
• After 2020 — The Saha line of small villas begins. In the eighteen months before September 2025 it accounts for ten openings

The houses to know

1. Chittoor Kottaram, Kochi (Cochin), India — The Cochin rajah's temple retreat, booked by one party at a time.
2. Kalari Kovilakom - The Palace for Ayurveda, Palakkad, India — In 2005, the CGH Earth Group painstakingly restored the 200-year-old structure and converted it into India's first rigorous luxury Ayurvedic hospital.
3. Coconut Lagoon, Kumarakom, India — A village of rescued tharavad houses on the bank of Vembanad.
4. Palais de Mahé, Puducherry, India — Eighteen rooms on Rue de Bussy, close enough to the sea for flip-flops.
5. Brunton Boatyard, Fort Kochi, India — A harbour hotel on the quay where Brunton ships went into the water.
6. Visalam, Kanadukathan, India — A 1939 Chettiar wedding house, Art Deco on the street and teak courtyards within.
7. Marari Beach Resort, Mararikulam, India — Palm-thatch cottages on a private stretch of fishing-village sand.
8. Spice Village, Thekkady, India — Elephant-grass cottages in a spice garden at the edge of Periyar.
9. Mantra Koodam, Kumbakonam, India — A Brahmin street rebuilt in Veppathur, with the Chola temples a short drive away.

Newest openings

• Singell Tea Estate, Kurseong, India, opened 2026. The house's first stay in the Eastern Himalayas: 11 rooms in a planter's bungalow and a newer wing on the Singell estate, planted in 1871 and still a working organic tea garden owned by Tea Promoters India. Trade coverage in August 2026 marked the opening. The stay is alcohol-free, with a chamal ko tika and khada welcome and tea from the factory next door.
• Isai Karai, Mahabalipuram, India, opened March 2026. A five-room Saha bungalow on the Bay of Bengal, about 50 metres from the shore: a three-bedroom main house and a separate two-bedroom unit, within reach of the Shore Temple.
• Pollachi Riverhouse, Pollachi, India, opened February 2026. A Saha single-key villa, three bedrooms and a pool on a riverbank, with Kongunadu cooking and the Anamalai forests (Topslip and Parambikulam) as the outing.
• Sanctuary Amaidiyana, Bommayapalayam, India, opened December 2025. A 23-key wellness hotel on the edge of Auroville. The name means peace in Tamil. Auroville designers Mona and Popo Pingel shaped it in hand-cut stone, reclaimed wood, and locally forged metal, with a dome-enclosed pool for Watsu, an outdoor pool, a spa, and a yoga hall.

Opening next

• Kalimpong, West Bengal, India. A second Eastern Himalayan property is being prepared after Singell. The opening year and the hotel name are still unpublished.
• Unconfirmed searches, as Michael Dominic described them in September 2025: Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, the hills of Goa, Uttarakhand, and the Northeast. Sri Lanka and Africa were named as markets under consideration, with no property announced.

Every CGH Earth hotel on the atlas

India

• Chittoor Kottaram — Kochi (Cochin) · High Luxury
• Brunton Boatyard — Fort Kochi · Core Luxury
• Coconut Lagoon — Kumarakom · Core Luxury
• Kalari Kovilakom - The Palace for Ayurveda — Palakkad · Core Luxury
• Palais de Mahé — Puducherry · Core Luxury
• Visalam — Kanadukathan · Core Luxury
• Mantra Koodam — Kumbakonam · Accessible Luxury
• Marari Beach Resort — Mararikulam · Accessible Luxury
• Spice Village — Thekkady · Accessible Luxury

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