Holiday Inn Gem Resort Ooty - My worst experience ever
We travelled from Bangalore to OOty, an 8 hrs long journey. I’ve stayed in other branches of Holiday Inn and had good experience. Hence, we booked Holiday Inn in Ooty as well.
We went there for 2 days during Mid Sep’08. The weather was cold enuf for us to wear jackets. It’s a big hotel with gud decor at reception. But that’s all.
We found the Staff Cold and full of attitude. We were given Room No:220. It had a common garden. The Toilet was not clean at all. There was pan parag sachet floating in the seat. Hair all over the bath tub+ ugly yellow stains on toilet seat and bath tub.
I called at reception and informed her about the messy bathroom. She said it had been cleaned but would send someone to clean it again. Anyhow the yellow stains would not go. We told her to change our Room. She said the Hotel is full and no room is available. We were upset as we had paid INR 3500/- per night. The stains were bad enuf to even look at, taking bath in that tub was way beyond our imagination.
The receptionist maintained that Hotel was full and room can’t be changed. Then we asked her to get us the Manager as we would check out. She immediately shifted us to Room no: 607.
We expected it to be clean. There wasn’t any garden with the room but it was bigger and better view. Again the bath tub had stains but cleaner enuf to manage 2 days. My husband had high fever and the room heater, central heater, took more than an hour to warm up the room. There were blood stains on the sheets. Pillow covers had stains. I didn’t want to give my husband the pain of moving to another hotel as he had 102 fever.I had to deal with it. It was Yuck!
Room Service was terribly slow. They would easily take 20 - 30 mins to send water. At times, I had to call them twice for water and they wud take half an hour.
Restaurant was good with good staff and decent food. Although, in room they only serve 4 dishes - dal Makhani, Aloo Jeera, Paneer and some veg Korma. They do have 2 - 3 non veg dishes as well for room service and Roti costs around INR 55.00 per roti. pretty expensive in terms of food. They charge like a 5 star hotel and services worst then 3 stars. I’ve stayed in Mahindra’s and Taj and many 3 stars. They are far better than Holiday Inn Ooty.
Swimming Pool, which they claim was thermally heated had COLD water. We asked for soap and they sent towels. We asked for tea sachets and they sent 2. They wud call in the middle of the night confirming if you ordered water. Pathetic I must say.
We had a bad experience. Good Luck with yours.