May 12, 2001 05:29 AM
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First things first - I am impressed that MouthShut has a pic of the actual hotel I stayed at. Nice!!
I stayed for nearly a week at Le Meridien Hotel in New Delhi in April. Here's the tG-tB-tU (the good, the bad and the ugly) of it:
The Good:
A royal place indeed. I have stayed at the best hotels in American and Europe, but the high end hotels in India have a majestic (maharaja heritage of the land?) feel to them. The lobby is better decorated than most American 5-star hotels. This particular Le Meridien is in a very nice neighborhood in New Delhi. All you Mumbaikars - just the round-about in front of this hotel has more trees, greenery and beauty, than the entire city put together (ok, I am exaggerating, but you get the point). The furniture in the rooms is expensive and of high quality. The rugs on the floor are the finest.
The Bad:
Overall I give the hotel AN AVERAGE. And to me, an Average is BAD. There is no attention to DETAIL. That, I think, is the story of EVERYTHING IN INDIA. The room has expensive furniture, but there is no quality control on how well a room is made by housekeeping. I actually found dust on furniture, electrical switches, etc.
The Ugly:
The hotel is clearly over-staffed. So labor is cheap in India, but QUANTITY will never amount to QUALITY. Oh, and no matter who you talk to - whether the front-desk staff, the hotel operator or house-keeping -- everyone has been taught to say ''sir'' at least once for each word in the sentence. For example, I was always greeted with ''Sir, Good Morning Sir'' or ''Sir, May I, Sir, Help you Sir?'' And while normally that would delight anyone, it's doubly disappointing, even annoying when you realize that all the ''sir-rity'' is seriously lacking sincerity. You ask for extra blankets, they forget to send them. You remind them, ''Sir sorry sir'' but nothing is done. You remind again and then five people show up over the next 2 hours with three blankets each. Every round of meal I ate in my room was served late. After a while, I stopped complaining and realized they just didn't care. ''Sir, yes sir?'' is a part of the Le Meridien culture, but there is nothing genuine behind it, it's all bogus.
The hotel is moderately expensive even by American and dollar standards. If they were tapping in to cheap labor market in India, the least they could do is not charge outrageously high prices for labor-intensive services such as ironing clothes or laundry.
