I've stayed here three times now. The first most important thing to say is that this hotel is nowhere near the centre of Bangalore. With traffic (and India's traffic and roads can be terrible), it can take up to 90 minutes to reach the centre of town from it. However, this place is right next door to Electronic City, which is where a lot of the Technical and Business Process outsource firms, plus a number of "captive" companies operate. So if you don't want to have to stay at one of the hotels in town and commute from town to Electronic City every day (which we don't), this is a good option.
One other thing that is a little unusual about this hotel is that it is a totally vegetarian, non smoking and alcohol free hotel. This is actually the philosophy of someone who either founded the hotel, or inspired it's owners. There is a big picture of him up in reception and books of his reviews are available in the rooms. However the hotel does not ram his views down your throat (so much so I can't remember this guys name anyway!) and I'm a vegetarian anyway, so this suits me.
I have stayed here three times, once in the summer of 2007 for a night, once in March 2008 for a week and once in July / Aug 2008 for two weeks. Here is the good and bad:
Good:
Clean
Huge number of helpful, well meaning and polite staff (I think they must have more staff than guests)
Free internet
Lovely vegetarian food in two restaurants, soon to be joined by a third when the rooftop one opens
Very short commute to Electronic city
Good room service
Foreign exchange to GBP, USD and EURO available on site
Fitness suite
Good security and in its own grounds
Bad:
Some staff have poor, or no English language skills. I know I'm not in the English speaking world in Bangalore, as such, but a hotel serving India's central area for IT and Business Process outsourcing could expect to have many English speaking guests. I met no one in the army of staff with, what I would term "fluent" English. Some of the room service staff have no English at all. This eventually built up to quite a frustration for me, as I had to explain some things many, many times and this was not helped by the Indian habit of saying "yes", even though sometimes it was really clear they had no idea what I asked them. So some things take a long time to explain and get done and some things don't get done in the way you ask.
The free internet is now accessed via an authentication system that works with a scratch card that you get from reception (it had no authentication system the first two times I stayed there). The card contains a code that you input into the field that your browser will re-direct you to when you first open it. When we checked in, the Receptionist explained this was for "Security" - someone must have been logging onto their network for free! This is all very well but the second day we were there, the authentication system broke down and when you opened a browser, it didn't re-direct you anywhere, it just did nothing. When I explained this to Reception, the simply took the authentication off the network again and solved the problem that way. However, when the authentication system started working again a week later, they didn't tell us and we just got disconnected in the middle of using the internet and had to ask them what had gone wrong. There then followed a day or two when their network switched from needing the password on the scratch card, to not needing it again, which was frustrating and confusing. When the authentication does work, the scratch cards they give you only last 12 hours, then you need a new scratch card and a new code. They do give you, if you ask, up to three cards at once, but it's annoying to have to keep remembering when you last put in your code, so that you know to put in a new one to avoid disconnection. Also, needing all those paper cards, seems wasteful in a country that has very poor garbage disposal. I don't understand why they can't do what I have seen done in many other hotels, just have a system whereby you put your name and room number into the browser each time you connect to their network and authenticate that way.
The army of staff are nice, but occasional the level of service gets overwhelming. Examples were; the people who stick with you in the fitness suite and insist on putting on the TV for you (even if you have an iPod with you), setting all the controls of the treadmill when you are standing on it, and on one bizarre occasion actually just standing staring at me for 20 minutes. I felt sure he would go away eventually and leave me in peace, but he couldn't have had anything else to do. Forget about opening any door for yourself, they always want to do it for you. We had a funny little game we used to play at breakfast. There was a toaster and bread out where guests could use it, but as soon as we got anywhere near it, two guys would appear out of nowhere and want to do it for us. So the level of service is nice, but over time, for people from the west, it can grate on your nerves a bit. One of the stranger experiences of the two weeks was a female colleague in our party who called housekeeping and asked that they come and pick up her dirty laundry, only to have a male member of staff come to her room, empty her dirty laundry onto her bed and manually sort through it all with her watching.
I'd love it if they played nice Indian music in the "Time Traveler" which the name of the main restaurant, however the music choice can be strange and repetitive. Especially when I was there in March of this year, they only seemed to have one CD, which got played constantly. It was a collection of '80's hits with the likes of Cyndi Lauper and Bonnie Tyler on it. It was OK the first time, but every day for breakfast and dinner it was driving me mad. Imagine going on business to India and having Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" constantly stuck in your head - not nice..... Worse, as anyone who knows India will know, the mains power kicks in and out a lot and the back up generator will take about 15 seconds to take over from the mains. In gap where there is no power, the CD player in the restaurant re-sets and goes back to track 1. One day there were about three transitions between the mains power and the generator, so you have to listen to track 1 of a CD over and over again. Happily, they seemed to have more than one CD when I returned in July but they still don't have many and what they did have got waring after a while. Even if you are the only person in the whole place and are sitting with an iPod, they always turn the music on for you - lucky you!
This hotel really has nowhere you can walk to in the immediate area. We have been to the local market twice, but this area is pretty unusual for westerners. We were not made to feel unwelcome, but we did get some funny looks as if the locals were pretty amazed to see non Indian people in there area. So you would have to drive anywhere to do something at night or on the weekends. One day we had had too much of the Indian roads, so we just decided to stay in the hotel - so you can feel a little "trapped" there.
Sometimes, despite the army of staff, the service is surprisingly slow, especially in the main restaurant. I ended up working out that, even if you ask twice for the bill, it does not come in a hurry and the only way to get it in a hurry is to walk out and they will come running after you with it!
But all in all these were relatively minor issues and a hotel always gets on my nerves a bit if I have to stay there more that a few days. We were a particular challenge for them as we were working through the night and sleeping in the day a we were supporting a new business process that was covering US hours and they seemed to accommodate this remarkably well.
So all in all, I'd say 8 out of 10. I'd go back there again, but hopefully Bonnie Tyler is staying somewhere else now!
