Beautiful location. Lovely gardens. Clean rooms. Helpful sweet staff. Mediocre food. Stick to ordering Indian only. And be prepared to go out for meals. If you want peace and quiet, go during the week. The weekend see many many people coming in and lots of noise.
Hate writing negative reviews, but here’s my experience at this place RiverStone Cottages, I stayed there in the last week of Dec ‘21. This place is highly mis-managed. They think they have a great property, which can run on its own. There is no concept of management, lower-level staff takes calls and does things as and when. We spend our hard-earned money to have a decent vacation, but such establishments completely ruin the experience with their arrogance, mis-management and high handedness. 1. They have no formally manned check-in counter, the security guy took our documents, gave us keys to the room and asked me to fill up a register. Their restaurant has a manager, but he hardly talks to customers, he pushes the other younger boys ahead to talk. You can hear guests yelling “call your manager” and no one steps up. 2. I switched on the TV and channels were not showing. The staff member asked me which channels I want to watch, so that he could recharge on TataSky. I was surprised at this question, I said “shouldn’t you have your TV system working, if you say ‘room has TV’?” The person explained that he will make a list of channels that I want, send to his MD, who will recharge the TataSky account. On seeing my list of 10 odd channels, he asked “are you going to watch so many channels in 3 days?”. Anyway, after an hour of slogging, it was available for me. 3. After check-in, we were hungry, I ordered room service, food didn’t come for an hour. I called up a couple of times, the guy handling the room service line is a legend called Jabar Singh (if I got the name right). He was busy, so he put the phone aside and kept me on hold. The phone was engaged thereafter. Finally food came when it came and I was told “the restaurant team is so busy right now” (as if a favour was done to bring food to my room). 4. We had requested extra mattress for our room, it was made of PU foam, as hard as sleeping on a rock. On asking them to give a softer mattress, they said “this is what we provide to our guests”. It wasn’t a great experience sleeping on that mattress. Am not sure why people rate this place as 'child friendly'. 5. The room was not clean, we thought they will clean it next day. That didn’t happen either. When asked, we were told “we clean rooms only when guests tell us to”. The room was finally cleaned on the third day of my stay, again, like someone did a favour. 6. In one of my orders, the dish was extremely spicy. I called up room service to complain that it’s too spicy for all of us. The guy on the other side said “this is how we make this dish in this place”. The guy was kind enough to take the dish back, make it less spicy and send the same to us. 7. A night before the checkout, I personally went to the restaurant to clear my room service bills. I purposely did that to ensure my checkout next morning is not affected due to their poor management. 8. I requested the restaurant team to ensure that I get something next morning, since I had to check out at 7:00 am. Guy said “we are open till very late, that’s why they don’t serve anything so early in the morning”. On making them realise that I am paying for breakfast, they reluctantly agreed to send me tea and some sandwiches, but no one came to my room in the morning with food. We finally left hungry. I even tipped Rs. 100 to a boy there to supervise the breakfast, alas, it didn’t work. One day’s breakfast cost fully wasted. 9. At the time of check out, I asked if I had to sign any documents, but the guys were clueless. There was no one at the counter (again), hence, no one did a proper check out nor did any one say "visit again" like they say in any hotel around the world. 10. It’s a waste of time writing much about the torn sheets on the bed, or the amount of dust under the bed (as if room hadn’t been cleaned for weeks). You will have random guys telling you “rooms are fully occupied”, whenever you ask why a request if not attended to. 11. Lastly, place is pretty far from anywhere, so you’d manage if you have your own car. Else look for something closer to habitat. So in a nut shell, please take this hotel if you are getting a deal of Rs. 3000-4000 per night, go with less expectations and carry lots of change cash. Check if there is a party on the date of your stay. Sundays are particularly crowded, irrespective, so better to avoid. Somehow, having a great view and location may not be enough to make it a great experience!…
Their location of the property is amazing and even the food service overall had a very good experience you can come with family friends even in large group. The best was there river view room which is the teak category room which they've got..
Dropped in for lunch over weekend. It's on the outskirts of Dehradun. Ample parking available. We liked the open air seating. Veg Lemon coriander Soup was great. Also liked Hariyali Paneer Tikka, Baked Vegetable & Dal Bukhara. Lunch for four cost around INR 1500.
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