For our first family foreign holiday I chose Makemytrip.com (MMT) and feel I should not have. I chose this service provider mainly because of price and convenience of timing of tour. I chose a trip to Singapore & Malaysia which was advertised for Rs. 40 K. After taking my confirmed booking, I was told much later that the choice of dates was not available. However, if I chose, I could take a tour on the same date but for a 30% higher cost!! I had to agree as Iwas constrained by dates. This meant I spent about 30% more than what I planned for.
I was assured that this ’upgraded’ tour was more relaxing - with direct flights and better hotels etc. However, I discovered later that my return flight was a hopping one - Singapore to Malaysia and onwards to Mumbai as the flights were booked in Malaysian Airlines which transit via Kuala Lumpur (KL) only. Hotels booked were good and we were happy with the same. Except that on the day when we landed in KL at 7 am in the morning, we were told that the hotel check in was only at 2 pm and therefore without a wash, we were taken for sightseeing !! And the hotel check in ran into problems and we could check in only at 4 pm.. By which time we were tired and angry...
The sight seeing organised was average.. It was done with a local tour operator and there was no one from MMT to accompany us.. The local tour operators do not care for giving us great service and sometimes can treat Indians as second class citizens (we discovered this to our dismay at Singapore).
Also, the local tour operators tend to take us to shopping joints of their choice so that they can get a commission for our purchases. So, instead of sight seeing the new city / country, we end up going to many shopping centers :(
When we tried to go for optional tours, we discovered that the costs of doing it ourselves was cheaper by almost 50%.. The local guys charge us a bomb for everything without giving us value for money..
Food was good at certain places but pathetic in a couple of places.. As vegetarians, we had to struggle for our type of food.. Overall, the food experience was average..
My biggest complain about MMT is that they are not fully involved in the trip and are not physically present to ensure the comfort of the customers.. We might as well have gone there on our own..