A good hotel in Chennai. Good English themed pub with pool tables and TV. Populated by almost totally men but a decent live duo. They have a really good Chinese restaurant and the breakfast buffet is good. The rooms are OK and clean and have free internet access. Would stay there again

This hotel is now known as the Radha Regent Hotel. It's an impressive hotel, with large comfortable rooms and a good selection of restaurants and a bar with entertainment.

Guests get five hours of free wireless internet, with more available for purchase at reasonable rates.

I enjoyed my three nights here and would definitely stay again. However as I was checking out two different couples came to reception to say they were checking out early because of the noise - there is a construction site right beside the hotel and the ground floor rooms suffer from noise from the machinery. I was on the third floor and didn't hear a thing.

A leading online travel company recently arranged accommodation for us at the Radha Park Inn, Chennai.
There seem to be certain practices by certain people at this establishment that will probably upset other clients as much as I was angered.

We arrived at the hotel at around 3am on the 30th January. We'd elected to use a local hotel as soon as we arrived, rather than face a 3 hour night drive to Pondicherry as soon as we landed after a 10 hour flight.

After grabbing a few hours sleep, we asked reception to organise a taxi to Pondicherry. I asked how much this would cost, and the guy behind the desk then spent the next five minutes banging in figures to his calculator. The resulting price was 4800 Rupees (around £61.50, not out of the question, you might think, for a 3-hour, 160 km trip). I was told that this could be paid by credit card. Now recall that we'd been travelling for the best part of 15 hours with 3-4 hours sleep at the end, so I wasn't exactly on top form.
After breakfast, I went to pay for the taxi at the travel desk, to be told that I would have to pay in cash "so that the driver could pay for petrol...". Again this didn't seem to be particularly out of line, it was India after all. I then changed a £50 Lloyds Bank sterling travellers cheque at reception to cover some of the cost. As I walked away with my money, I felt that the currency figures were wrong. I checked the confirmation slip to find that the guy had given me rupees for a 50 dollar travellers cheque. Call me old fashioned, but it's is blatantly obvious that a sterling cheque is just that, by virtue of the large '£' symbols all over it. Having spotted the 'mistake' I went back to demand that the cheque be exchanged to its full face value. This was done, although I received no apology, and therefore am led to believe that this person knew exactly what he was up to.

Sadly, the saga continues: finding that I still needed more cash for the taxi, I changed a further £50 cheque (no problems this time; it was a different person on the desk...), and paid the cash for the taxi.
We were driven to Pondicherry, which took the allotted 3 hours, albeit with a stop for a tyre change on the way, the old tyre having split around it's circumference due to extreme old age and having been remoulded at least half a dozen times.
I gave the driver a tip of 400 rupees, in my infinite wisdom. No wonder he nearly fell over, his face lit with joy - no doubt he's very cosy with the receptionist at the Radha Park Inn. And he never bought any fuel along the way, either...

The manager of our destination hotel in Pondicherry informed me that the true cost should have been a maximum of 2000 rupees, and that there was a much quicker, more pleasant route. Using a different driver, obviously, we took this route on the return leg. It was indeed quicker and much more pleasant.

Whilst we will return to this area of Tamil Nadu, I will not be using the Radha Park Inn at Chennai again following our experience.

The hotel itself was very good, air con, great atrium entrance and restaurant - but it just lets itself down by things like this happening.

Hi,

I am an Indian national and my wife is a US citizen. This was the first time I took her to my hometown Chennai. We stayed at the Radha Park Inn for 8 days. It was wonderful.

The air-conditioning worked great, the service was prompt and courteous. The hot water worked great and the house keeping was prompt in getting us what we wanted. Hair dryers are available upon request but while alarm clocks are a feature in US hotels, wake up calls are the norm in Indian hotels and alarm clocks are not provided. The internet connection was real fast though it cost Rs.125 per hour, which still was somewhat reasonable. It cost us $80 per night to stay there, the rates may have gone up to $90 per night with taxes after tariff increases in October, we obtained our reservation earlier than October. One thing I did notice is that they give summary charges upon check-out and do not break down the long distance phone charge by every call you made. So it does help to keep an approximate track of your own charges. However, their charges tallied up just fine with my records when I checked out.

The breakfast was included. It contained a combination of Indian and continental cuisine. It had cereal, french toast, someone available to make omelettes for you with veggies and cheese, boiled eggs, plain toast, muffins and then of course a barrage of Indian breakfast food too. Coffee and tea were included in the complimentary breakfast but not water. We always opted for mineral water when we ate there. The breakfast is inside Cafe In The Park, which is one of 2 restaurants inside the hotel. The other one is Oriental Blossom, a place offering chinese and japanese style cuisine. All of them are reasonably priced. Then you have a pub named Geoffreys for having drinks, if you love smoking and drinking, that is a good place for you. Yes, you do get tired with the choices in the breakfast after a while.

The rental car, if arranged through the hotel, may be a bit more expensive than outside the hotel ($40 as opposed to $30 for 10 hours/100 kms during a day with a driver) but it is worth it since the drivers tend to know routes and tourists better when the car is booked through the hotel. Besides, the hotel's reputation is at stake too. Once, we had to pick up some tailored clothing somewhere. The driver from the hotel made sure to keep us under the daily hour limit and took his personal vehicle to pick up the stuff for us the day before we left Chennai. (I couldn't have expected this kind of service in Delhi which we visited for 3 days prior to going to Chennai. Delhi is over-priced and it is just like living and eating out (if you choose an upscale place) in New York City or London. The streets, living conditions and service in Delhi definitely don't warrant their asking prices, but that is my personal opinion.)

I would definitely give this hotel a 4-star for class, and a 5-star for service.

Sriram