INS Viraat – the world’s oldest existing aircraft carrier – is to be decommissioned in June and turned into a museum and luxury hotel in Andhra Pradesh, India.

Also the last British-built ship serving with the Indian Navy, Viraat was floated in 1959 as the Royal Navy's HMS Hermes and was later transferred to India in 1987, remaining for more than a decade as the Indian Ocean’s sole aircraft carrier.

Mounting maintenance costs and rapid depletion of India’s fleet of Sea Harrier jump jets led to the the decision to decommission Viraat.

Ownership of the vessel, which cost billions of dollars to develop, is to be transferred to the Andhra Pradesh state government, which will convert the ship into a museum and 500-bedroom luxury hotel with a conference hall at a cost of US$3m (€2.6m, £2m).

State officials are hoping the ship will help to boost tourism in the area, which is also home to INS Kursura, a decommissioned Soviet submarine converted into its own museum in 2002.

The conversion is being jointly undertaken by the Indian Navy and the Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority (VUDA). India’s central government is also contributing to the project under a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model.