Tuesday, August 06, 2013

If only the service had been as good as the place ...

During our 3-week vacation to India, we managed to steal a short holiday to a great resort called ‘Mystique Ville’ positioned in their website as ‘a pristine jungle experience’ !

Located amidst mountains and tea estates of Ooty in the south of India, this place is located more precisely near ‘Kalhatti Waterfalls’ on the ‘Seegur Ghat Road’ amidst the lush greenery of the tea plantations, waterfalls and dense foliage set at about 1,600 meters above sea level making it a very quiet and peaceful retreat.

Specifically, Mystique Ville is right off the 15th Hairpin Bend (about 25 kms downhill) from Ooty town, enroute to Masinagudi / Theppakadu / Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary.

The property is a well-maintained and very charming Portuguese style resort with Victorian style interiors. Each of the 11 Victorian styled rooms has restored antique furniture, complete with a hearth. The room in the middle of the property is the best, commanding the best views.

The 2 nights and 3 days that we spent there, we had the entire property all for ourselves, since there were absolutely no other guests !!

Jessica, the front office help was really helpful. Didn’t see any Manager about whom I’ve heard horror stories. The rest of the support staff was not too enthusiastic to put it mildly. Perhaps there were no guests around except just my family.

May be because there were no other guests the service standards were overall lax and lethargic.

Just to quote one example, when I got up early one morning (by about 6) to my utter shock I realised that no hot water was flowing from the bathroom taps. Mind you, mornings around here can get pretty chilly and the cold water was near freezing.

So I desperately went around looking for some help who can turn on the hot water supply, but couldn’t find a soul for a good 1 hour. After great difficulty I managed to catch hold of some local help and they in turn went looking for the plumber, who was finally found and after a good couple of hours running around the resort the hot water supply was finally turned on. It was very frustrating besides being very irritating. You certainly don’t want to go through this when you’re on your vacation.

One more downside of being the only occupants of the resort was that the restaurant service was shockingly poor and casually negligent.

The resort had to cook only for us and naturally it was on our pre order. No issues there. But what was served was of extremely poor quality with little or no taste, besides having to wait endlessly for our food – breakfast, lunch and dinner – even though we tell the restaurant in-charge what we’ll have a good 3-4 hours beforehand.

Overall loved the property. Particularly the pristine and lush environs complete with a flowing waterfalls (whose ever present lilting sound can soothe and calm the most knotted of nerves). Full marks there.

But the service standards across the board leave a lot to be desired.

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