Mauritius - a racist place for Indians?
For a country that has the tourism ranked 3rd on its list to grow their economy we had a very bad experience with Seaside Holidays and a restaurant(Chez Ruben) besides other places. We had booked our trip through Makemytrip.com(Make My Trip, Delhi) who had contracted everything from pick up to drop off to Seaside tours. We also had other folks who had booked through Cox and Kings(Cox & Kings) and some other tour companies in the tour on our bus.
What is alarming to me is that almost 99% of the people we saw in the hospitality industry including tour travels, the sales industry are all in some way shape or form have ancestors from India. The discrimination against Indians is almost ghastly of all these people from Seaside Tours. When my Day 1 and 2 experiences were bad with the Seaside I had hoped that I would not have to generalize this across the board since I had a fantastic experience at the resort we stayed in. But then the experience continued at the restaurant where the tour took us for lunch on day 3. While I know that none of the westernized world would take discrimination lightly I wonder if the Mauritian government does anything about this. The other disappointing thing I noticed was the need to be able to bargain for EVERYTHING! from buying a bottle of water to taking a taxi you will be shelling out a lot from your wallet if you are not good at bargaining.
I specify names of the company employees in the hope that someone of importance within the company or Mauritius tourism reads this and does something about it.
As I continue to detail my experience below another point was that when I spoke to my tour operator contact person, Mr. Fardeen, with Seaside holidays that I would like to see him when he visits the hotel the next day he played the disappearing act. He was due to come every day to the hotel to meet the new guests that were coming in and we were here for 5 more days after I called him and requested him to meet me when here. This just basically shows their attitude that they care a damn about what people(their customers) feel about their tours and employees.
For a country that runs partially on tourism they suck at hospitality with tourists. The first day of our tour my husband was opening the foldable seat in the bus as my toddler was feeling sleepy due to their delay in leaving the hotel. The driver, Mr. Shaukat, actually YELLED at him, " Don’t play with the seat!" I told him he wasn’t playing! That was the start of our trip so go figure how our mood was in the bus for the rest of the day.
Day 2 of our tour due to a misunderstanding between the tour operator and us our entire group was given two minutes while eating breakfast to get in the bus or miss the day of sightseeing by the tour guide Mr. Pritam. When this was told to us I was in the restaurant bathroom with my toddler. Once out I told the guide to give us a few extra minutes so I could run-up to our room to get the bags. He flatly refused called the tour manager and we spent about 5 minutes discussing this over the phone! and he yet would not give me a few minutes extra. we were asked to take a taxi at Rs. 800 Mauritian currency to get to the first point of visit. Of course we did that to miss the rest of the tour. That day we had a tour of the island. once we had joined the group we were transported to a place where another company was trying to sell the entire group some optional packages. Once done the group was transported to the Island where we were given about 2. 5 hrs to enjoy the island, water sports and finish lunch. We met the tour guide back at the appointed time of 3 pm who asked us to wait for him n the other side till he got the whole group back together. We, all except two couples, were then transported back to the mainland around 3:30 p.m. While waiting on the whole as per the guide’s instructions were yelled at by a lady in crutches at 3:35 p.m. that if we didn’t get in the bus quickly we would all have to take the taxi back to the hotel. Our bus left at 5 p.m.! The tour guide waited of course now for these two couples to come. He extremely rudely and conveniently said that we had given you the time from 3 to 4 p.m. to return the meeting point at the island! Go figure.
Day 3 of the tour we were asked to be ready at 8 am. though the printed itinerary asked us to come at 9:45 a.m. We were all there but of course the bus didn’t show up till 8:30 a.m. Fortunately for us the guide was not bad that day but nothing uneventful about Seaside Holiday. the restaurant that we were taken to( Chez Ruben) we were racially discriminated. We were waiting for someone to come take the order of food for us. After waiting for 25 minutes we called out to someone and the guy shows up and says: "You Indians" are always in a hurry! Excuse me I said, we are hungry. To this he replied" You all always are" OF course the way tour companies work anywhere in the world they had brought us to a place where that was by far the only restaurant so we didn’t have a choice but be humiliated and eat food. Later we found out that at the same restaurant someone else was told that "This is the only menu we have for Indians" TO elaborate this restaurant had a regular menu for multiple pages for everyone else. But to all Indian tourists who came there we were given a page with two items on it one veg, one nonveg. Take it or leave it. We also found out that the same guide we had on day two had had multiple issues with almost all other people who had dealt with him. It is a wonder how tour companies can hire anyone with such a humiliating demeanor towards the clients who actually make their bread and butter.
While a previous trip made through Make My trip was extremely pleasurable hence we had booked this one as well. We doubt if we will feel comfortable about doing the same in the future. Based on speaking to other people around us on the trip it seemed that since everybody who went to the different parts of Mauritius on different days they would have different experiences. But it was the same experience across the board. No one wished to return to Mauritius due to this humiliation and discrimination.