This was our 2nd trip with ITD. The 1st one was our honeymoon trip to Kashmir and they arranged it really well! Except some issues with the local travel operators whom ITD book for tours at Kashmir, it was an excellent one!
Based on that experience, we thought of going for a family trip to Rajasthan with ITD. We will definitely remember this trip for the innumerable Forts at Rajasthan, the super-smooth highways and obviously, the service glitches by ITD!
Pros:
Our Driver, Suresh: An extremely humble person with superb driving skills, with thorough knowledge of the places we visited. The long journeys between different places of Rajasthan was made comfortable only because of him.
Vehicle: We were provided an AC Innova, probbaly one of the most comfortable cars for long journeys in planes. Good selection.
Cons:
- Arrangements: We were 5 adults travelling and ITD had booked 2 rooms+ 1 extra bed for us. They should have known that the hotels were providing just A MATTRESS instead of a single bed! We could not bear the fact that one of us would be literally sleeping over ground.in spite of paying a hefty amount for the trip! We expressed our concern to Pradeep(Executive from ITD) and he told this would be taken care of. Also, he tried to show some vague logic that in all of the hotels, extra bed means a mattress only. and even in the next hotel, the same continued! We were extremely annoyed at their arrangements, and asked Pradeep either to cancel the trip midways or re-arrange things! Thankfully, the hotels in the next destinations provided one single bed as expected. And that itself proved the vagueness of Pradeep’s statement "extra bed means a mattress only"! ITD should know that all their customers are not fools!
2.Hotel management: Some of the Hotels were of really good standard, but others were not. Like the hotel at Bikaner(Hotel Chirag) was situated in a barren land, almost outside the city and we had to drive for at least an hour, that to at 9pm, just to find out the hotel. And then we had to face their VERY RUDE management. Finally we decided not to stay at that hotel, both because of their management’s behavior and the bed arrangements! And with the help of the driver, we found out another hotel, which was not that’classy’ and expensive, but was pretty neat and nicely arranged. Most importantly, their service was top-notch! ITD should concentrate more on the service provided by the hotels, and not just the decor and price!
Standard of hotels: Some of the Hotels were of really good standard(like the ones in Jodhpur and Pushkar), but others were not. Like Hotel Moonlight an Jaisalmer and Swiss Camp at Sam Dunes were pathetic. In moonlight, the rooms were small, the beds were crampy. In Swiss camp too, arrangements were really poor. the bed, the food, the cultural programs, the water supply, everything was not upto the mark! But I should mention, Hotel Marvel Umed at Jodhpur and Vishnupriya at Udaipur were really of good standard.
Food: The food prepared/served in most of the hotels were very very bad. specially in Hotel Crown and Swiss Camp. We slept off without taking dinner at Hotel Crown. Then all of us fell sick out of Diarrhea after having food at Swiss Camp.
Overall an average trip, could have been made better with a little more attention to details.