I had my wedding scheduled on 6th May 2011 at Nasik. Based on reviews and contacts of my in-laws we chose Hotel Sai Palace and visited it in January 2011 and April 2011 to check the place. The mistake we made was, we just checked the rooms.
Let me start this review with the good part:
Rooms: This place has nice rooms with all basic amenities and strong air conditioning for its price. The rooms are reasonably spacious and can fit an extra bed if required. Sadly this where the good part ends.
Infrastructure: Generally you don’t expect this to be a problem at any place which charges you over 2K per night but here, the lift was a pain, a real pain. My father has a medical condition and uses a wheel chair to move around, he was stuck in the basement in front of the lift for~30 mins as it was not working. The management continuously kept saying they are working on it but it has broken down. On making a scene by yelling at the staff and shifting the venue, the lift started working and kept doing so for the next two days. Either the hotel manager had a magic wand to perform this miracle or they intentionally shut it down to save some cost. Besides troubling my father it also became troublesome for my other guests who took a three hour drive to Nasik only to be stuck at the reception and finally choosing to walk three floors with their Knee problems. I would recommend not using this place if you are travelling with senior citizens or people with back or knee problems
Staff: The people of the hotel are very rude and don’t even the courtesy to console a troubled guest. The manager, Mr. Bagga will behave completely oblivious to your continuous complains and would also go to the extent of raising his voice at the guests once they have checked in with advance payment. The front desk receptionists denied serving water after repeated requests saying "we can’t serve anything near reception as per our policy; you will have to go downstairs to the basement restaurants". The place is short staffed and they will place one person to serve 25 people high tea. Will give more details in the service section.
Food: Awful, Awful, Awful, the place serves the most pathetic food you will ever taste anywhere, not even single meal had quality and lacked variety even after being promised weeks before. Almost all my guest had stomach issues after the wedding; in fact two of them threw up twice during the two day stay. Most of the time, half way thru the dinner, the food will be over and would take really long to be refilled even after continuous reminders. The oil used by the hotel makes the fried items totally inedible and heavy to digest. The food played a big role in ruining the show throughout the two days.
Service: The place just doesn’t know that hotels business is more than just providing rooms to sleep, they are painfully slow with everything that is expected out of them. Let me break this down further into sub sections:
A. Room Service: 30 minutes after asking for ice and some glasses, the order came to the room once my friend checked if he needs to come downstairs to collect the stuff himself.
B. Housekeeping: Before going for one of our ceremony, followed by the dinner, we handed over the list of the 5 rooms where extra beds are needed yet the housekeeping started getting the beds after couple of reminders(three hours later when the ceremony and dinner was over)
C. Waiters: First they are short staffed or at least seemed to be, the place gave us one person to serve 25 people for high tea during the evening, I and my brother had learnt the entire map of the kitchen by the third meal because repeated reminders to refill the food went unheard as the person could go inside to mention the same to the cook. Generally in Indian weddings after the reception, the couple has dinner with the family and close friends with waiters serving them. Here they made ready plates filled with the leftover food after others were done; it seemed like a Gujrati/Marwadi restaurant serving Thali. Of all the weddings I have attended in my life waiters rush to the key people on the table with food to make some good tip, here the waiters were happy chatting within themselves and continued serving Thalis even after being reminded of not doing so twice.
Hygiene: The place has very low standards and understanding of cleanliness, I thought of taking a dip in the pool before the first ceremony to freshen up and relax. The pool was full of filth floating atop the pool and was total turn off for the plan. For our reception we had booked the lawn and after the food was done, there were empty disposable glasses all around the place with no one thinking to clean them.
Organizing: We had booked 16 rooms originally and I want a separation between my friends and family for obvious reasons. An ideal separation would be put people of separate floors, here they had originally placed us in separate buildings which were “Interconnected” and the two floors was a good 10 mins walk apart from each other. Upon one round of request, yelling followed by threat to switch hotel they accommodated us in the same building on different floors. We had also trusted the manager Mr. Bagga for arranging the band and godhi(mare) for the wedding, the mare was definitely on probation or close to being fired as it was continuous making its own moves rather than following the master.
Finally my overall advice to the reader is, if you are planning to go this hotel: DON’T DO IT. This place will ruin all your plans to celebrate and enjoy your wedding, vacation, travel or anything else.
If you are associated with the hotel and can improve it, here’s a starting point: FIRE MR. BAGGA, his attitude reflects in all the employees and if you really want to improve, get a person more focused on providing service. Had it been possible, I would have filed for a compensation for the trauma and humiliation my family went thru here for 2 days.