Shocking !. Review on Jaypee Palace Hotel, Agra

Stayed at the Jaypee Palace Agra mid August this year (2003) along with my wife and two children (8 & 5) Check in We arrived in the small hours after an arduous journey and felt completely worn out. 1st impressions were good; you have to pass through a large gate that is opened a security guard. You have to drive up a shortish drive to reach reception bell hops etc carried bag inside and the formalities of checking in were short and efficient.

Along with your room key you are given vouchers entitling you to a free complementary non alcoholic drink in the bar and your breakfast vouchers (we had breakfast included in the room rate) An extra payment was required for breakfast vouchers for the children. Check out went fine except that someone had to tun up to our room to check the mini bar because I can only think they though we weren?t telling them the truth on what we had had.

Room The room was the general bland type of room you would find almost anywhere in the world for this class of hotel. A large double bed 20 inch TV Plenty of space in the wardrobe. A couple of armchairs a coffee table, and a large desk and chair. Tea and coffee making stuff comprised of a rather cheap looking electric kettle a few disgusting tasting sachets of instant coffee and a couple of tea bags plus sugar. Controls for the air conditioning etc were easy to use.

The bathroom was OK well appointed decent sized tub and shower plus the usual rather rubbish complementary shampoo soap etc. A rather bizarre card was in the bathroom stating the hotels commitment to helping the environment and one of the items on the card was if you felt the urge to save water leave your towels in the bath tub and they will not be replaced when housekeeping make your room.

We decided we needed an extra bed ? the bed arrived and it turned out to be a rather nasty cheap looking folding bed which would have been more suited to a camp site, more about that bed later! General Appearance After the drive through Agra which is really quite depressing, even for India the Jaypee looks impressive not sure which type of material they used in the construction but the architect must have liked the colour red once inside the lobby is bright and airy but once away from the lobby area and into the corridors of the hotel it resembled what I though what a gulag must have looked like, the blandness is with out compare !

Added to this the maze like layout we got lost a couple of times when leaving/returning to our room. There are a couple of court yards one was called the oval and all it was, was a garden which an oval layout, the other was called the moghul courtyard, set garden with numerous water features, would have been nice to have seen the water features working.

There are some gardens which surround the large pool which was occupied by what all I can say were loud mouthed yuppie types trying to impress each other and the few women who were around. I felt genuinely uncomfortable when we passed this rabble with my wife and two young children when we went for an early evening stroll in the grounds. Room Service / Housekeeping Lets start with room service; the hotel advertises itself as having a multilingual staff.

I had difficulty in placing my orders in English so I resorted to Punjabi that met with the same fate. After a lot of time the message got through and this happened every time I used room service. Once the order was place it arrived in good time and complete and tasted ok. Housekeeping was good the place was clean and made very well.

Restaurants Going by the rates fro the mini bar and room service items which I felt were expensive for the price of a club sandwich in the hotel we had a very tasty and filling meal in the town, we decided not to use the restaurant, but I did decide to have breakfast inn the grand buffet room which as the name suggests is a buffet. I found this experience absolutely terrible. Having queued for ages waiting for the chefs to prepare eggs and having to listen to a chap rounding on one of the chefs for not carrying out his orders to the letter, a less than polite person shoved to the front and ordered and the worst of it was the chefs processed there orders knowing I had waited in line for an age.

I would have accepted this had this been a roadside stall but not in a 5 star hotel. I ended up ordering breakfast from room service. Other Info. The extra bed I mentioned earlier, when I got into it it collapsed and broke an electrical outlet on the wall behind me once I?d recovered from the shock of the bed collapsing I saw the broken socket and realised how lucky I was not to have suffered another kind of shock.

I rang housekeeping to explain what had happened the answer I got was an OK so I waited and waited fro someone to appear to change the bed etc after 30mins of waiting I went down to reception getting lost on the way due to the maze like layout of the place. I once again had to deal with the mutli lingual staff.

The only way I could get anyone to come with me was to physically grab them by the arm and lead them to our room. The bed was replaced and to my horror when we return in the afternoon after sight seeing etc the electrical socket hadn?t been repaired or the offer made to use of changing rooms. The solution was for them to push an armchair up against the wall. The socket didn?t have minor damage but exposed electrical connections were visible.