How these hotels were researched
▼- Rates: compared across more than one booking platform on the same day, quoted as a range with the month checked. Not a quote, and they move.
- Guest reviews in bulk: looking for complaints that repeat across many months, not single bad nights.
- Location: checked against a map, measured to the thing you actually came for.
- Real cost of entry: taxes, compulsory meal plans, transfers, and what is not included in the headline rate.
- What I could not confirm is said plainly in the text rather than filled in.
Udaipur is the one Indian city where the hotel is the attraction. That is a problem as much as a selling point, because it means the two best-known properties are priced against a view rather than against each other.
The short version. Taj Lake Palace is on an island in Lake Pichola and you reach it by boat. The Oberoi Udaivilas is on the western bank and looks across at it. One of these gives you the view. The other gives you the picture, because you cannot photograph the Lake Palace from inside the Lake Palace.
Rates are indicative ranges compared across booking platforms in July 2026. Udaipur is strongly seasonal and the monsoon months are materially cheaper than the December window.
Taj Lake Palace
Built in the mid-1700s as a summer palace and floating, more or less, on the lake. You arrive at a jetty near the City Palace and a boat takes you across. That crossing is the thing people remember, and it is genuinely good the first time.
It is also the constraint. Every time you want dinner in town, a shop, the Monsoon Palace at sunset or the folk museum, you are on the boat timetable in both directions. Guests report that this wears thin faster than expected on a stay longer than two nights, particularly with small children or anyone with mobility difficulties.
The second thing worth knowing is the water. Pichola is not a natural lake, it is fed and managed, and in a poor monsoon year the level drops. In bad years photographs have shown the palace surrounded by mud flats rather than water. This is not the hotel's fault and it is not every year, but if you are booking specifically for the floating effect, check recent photographs for the season you are travelling in rather than the marketing images.
| Indicative rate | Around Rs 55,000 upward for entry categories, far higher for the historic suites |
|---|---|
| Rates checked | July 2026 |
| Access | Hotel boat from the City Palace jetty, no road access |
| Rooms | Around 65 to 80 depending on category configuration |
| Watch for | Lake level in a weak monsoon year |
| Best for | One or two nights, as an event rather than a base |
In its favour
- There is nothing else like arriving at your hotel by boat
- Genuinely historic, not a modern build on an island
- Once you are on the island it is completely quiet
Worth knowing first
- Boat dependency gets old past two nights
- You cannot see the Lake Palace from the Lake Palace, which is the view most people are picturing
- Lake levels vary and a dry year changes the setting significantly
- Awkward for anyone with reduced mobility
The Oberoi Udaivilas
Udaivilas is not historic. It opened in 2002 on land that was a royal hunting ground, and it is built in a palace idiom rather than being a palace. Normally that would count against it on a page about heritage hotels. Here it does not, because the execution is serious and because of where it sits.
It is on the bank, which means road access, which means you can leave whenever you like. It also means the rooms and the terraces look across the water at the Lake Palace and the City Palace. The view people travel to Udaipur for is the one you get from here, not the one you get from the island.
Several room categories have private pools, and the semi-private pool arrangement in the premier rooms is unusual: a shared strip of water running along a row of rooms with direct access from each. Read the category description carefully, because "pool" in the room name does not always mean a pool that is only yours.
The criticism is that it can feel new. Everything works, the staff are drilled, the proportions are grand, and some guests find the overall effect closer to a very good resort than to somewhere with three hundred years of accumulated oddity. If what you want is a building with history in it, this is not that.
| Indicative rate | Around Rs 45,000 upward, considerably more for pool and suite categories |
|---|---|
| Rates checked | July 2026 |
| Opened | 2002, built in palace style on former royal hunting land |
| Access | By road, plus a hotel boat across the lake if you want it |
| The view | Faces the Lake Palace and City Palace across the water |
| Best for | Longer stays, and anyone who wants the postcard view from their own room |
In its favour
- You get the view of the lake and the Lake Palace, which the Lake Palace cannot give you
- Road access, so no boat timetable governing your day
- Consistently strong service reports across long review histories
Worth knowing first
- Built in 2002, so it is palace-style rather than a palace
- "Semi-private pool" categories are shared, and the naming misleads people
So which one
For one night as a set piece, the Lake Palace. For anything longer, Udaivilas, and it is not close. The boat is a wonderful thing on day one and an obstacle by day three.
There is also a third option that almost nobody suggests, which is to stay in one of the smaller havelis on the ghats at a tenth of these prices and buy a table at the Lake Palace or Udaivilas for dinner or afternoon tea instead. Non-resident dining is normally possible with a reservation. You get the boat ride, the courtyard and the view, and you sleep somewhere that costs what a hotel room should cost. For a lot of travellers that is the right answer and it is worth considering before spending five figures on a bed.
Practical notes
- Udaipur airport is at Dabok, roughly 22 km east of the lake. Allow an hour in traffic.
- Ask which side your room faces. Lake-facing is a real premium at both properties and a city-facing room at a lake-facing price is a common complaint.
- The monsoon months are cheaper and the lake is fuller. Late September is often the best combination of price and water level.
- If you want to photograph the Lake Palace at sunset, you need to be on the bank or on the water, not on the island.
If palace hotels are the reason you are coming to Rajasthan at all, the Jaipur and Jodhpur palace comparison covers how the same question plays out in those two cities.