So it goes like this: a sudden plan was made on Friday to visit Cochin during the monsoon. We were to land there on Friday evening and return on Sunday evening. We had heard so much of the Kerala Tourism run Bolgatty palace hotel, it was natural for us to call them up and take advantage of their monsoon fares. We landed in Cochin airport and hired a cab to Bolgatty Palace.
We just relaxed on Friday night. On Saturday morning, we woke up to find that there was no running hot water in the bathroom. We called housekeeping. A lady listened to our complaint and said, ’OK’ and hung up. Strange. We thought it meant that somebody will attend to us. Sure enough, in about 15 minutes, a man came in to check. Problem: he could not speak hindi or english. Are we really in a 5-star hotel, we thought. He uttered a few words: "underground connection". No idea what that meant. He confirmed that indeed there was no hot water and left. After some more frustrating time, we called up house keeping again. We told the lady that there is no hot water. The lady insisted that there is ho
T water now. "Why don’t you come and see for yourself?". We found out that all rooms had this problem. A little later, another man came in. He could speak english. He checked the bathroom and explained to us apologetically that because of the monsoon, the underground connecting pipes were soaked in water and the water was getting cold by the time it reached the bathroom. He requested that we bear this for once and the problem will be fixed soon. He promised to send us hot water in buckets. Although not convinced, we accepted the apology.
Two buckets of hot water came. I had my bath in the traditional indian style and also my wife had our baby take his bath as well. We needed one more bucket. We called up housekeeping and requested another bucket of hot water. A lady came with the bucket. Problem: the bucket had dirty water(!) And we asked the lady to take it back. Unfortunately, communication problem again. The lady could speak only malayalam. We had to call housekeeping again to get the water replaced.
That evening, I took a massage in the ayurveda centre. I was surprised to find that in this high profit centre, the bathrooms were getting running hot water alright. Unfortunately, the whole story of no hot water in the bathrooms continued the next day as well.
The same evening, I had asked the reception for the computer room because I wanted to book my return ticket. The receptionist casually told me that the computer is full of viruses and is unusable. I asked him if there was someone working to repair it. He told me unapologetically, "NO".
This hotel is a typical government service. As long as nothing goes wrong, it is all well. But to get anything fixed, it takes ages. I would not recommend Bolgatty Palace to anyone.