TL;DR: Lake Pichola Hotel looks good on the outside, but is filthy on the inside. They have patronising, racist staff, and poor upkeep and hygiene. You will regret booking a room there. Go to one of the MANY other amazing options in Udaipur. I'd give this hotel negative stars if I could. Be your own judge once you read the details below:
We prebooked (and prepaid) 4 rooms at this hotel for a party of 9 adults, including 4 seniors with various mobility limitations and 3 young children under the age of 5, more than a month ahead. We had informed the hotel through Booking.com and a phonecall of the same. When we arrived, we were greeted by a beautifully decorated property and were happy. But that’s when our nightmare started.
Firstly, we were not given rooms together despite booking well ahead of time, in fact all rooms were far from each other. The rooms that we were given were inaccessible by us with steep steps, and dirty, dingy, dust ridden pathway towards the room. It looked like these rooms hadn’t been accessed in months. When we approached the counter, we were greeted by a Mr Surendra Singh Jodha who was extremely dismissive of our disappointment at the accessibility of the room and cleanliness of the hotel. He then suggested that we pay a fee to have 2 of our 4 rooms upgraded, not actually solving our problem. He denied ever receiving our note of the limitations of our party, and kept insisting that we are given the best possible rooms.
We then asked for a refund of the booking fee due to the impossible conditions for us, and he had insisted that this was subject to the hotel’s discretion, and that they would eventually issue us a cheque - an assurance flippantly scribbled on a scrap piece of paper. On seeing their lack of sincerity we requested for a cash refund. Our request for immediate refund was denied (one of the excuses was they had no cash on site). Simultaneous, we also spoke to other FOREIGN hotel guests, they commented that their rooms were very good.
What ensued was a flat-out denial of any wrong-doing from Surendra and his team at the hotel. There was deception, dishonesty, disrespect and exploitative racism from his end. Deception: That these rooms were the only rooms available based on our booking, and that better rooms were not available at our time of booking, which were now available at a fee.
Dishonesty: That they had no cash on site – they did, and eventually upon prolonged pressure gave us a full refund in cash
Disrespect: Insisted that the mobility issues of the elders and children were not a concern of theirs
Racist exploitation: Better rooms were provided to non-resident Indian and foreign guests, saving the worst rooms in the house for domestic guests, likely also due to the fact that they had the full fee paid in advance
The result:
We faced a very challenging situation with no food for the kids (all of them went to sleep without having a proper dinner), and we finally had to scramble for a hotel room, where we ended up paying double of what we were supposed to pay.
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