Hotel Mass in Pondicherry for all its hype and net savyness isn’t such a great place to unwind in a place like pondicherry which has umpteen places in similar category of hotels.
The location of this place is convenient if you think so and not so convenient if you were looking for a sea facing balcony room, for all rooms don’t face anywhere as the hotel itself is located in the non french part of pondy which is like any other lodge in a typical tamilnadu city with a lot of noise and chaos.
The restaurants and the bar titled ’Aruvi’ though are excellent and consistently churn out lavish chettinad, South Indian and continental fares. I haven’t had a more chiller beer in pondicherry than the ones served at Aruvi.
Somehow the bearers and the bartenders are grossly involved in watching tamil channels on the TV at the restaurant which can be quite a dampener if you are not a keen follower of tamil cinema or don’t have an appetite for sentil-goundamani’s comical acts. The chicken cooked in many varieties stands out and a colleague of mine swears by their chicken and says that it’s the best he’s ever tasted.
The rooms are quite poorly maintained for the prices they charge and is definitely expensive for pondy’s tourist friendly standards. I have also experienced that the hotel staff forcibly sell you deluxe rooms even though standard rooms are available.
This I have noticed when you go in unannounced without prior reservations. Guess this happens in most places. The food and the dessert at Hotel Mass was refreshingly different and even served us farm fresh litchis with icecreams (wonder how they could manage that one). To summarize a nice place which could have been better if they could slightly lower tariffs or improve quality of service and reduce checkin and checkout times.