In October, I had to visit Kolkata for 4 days and this time I thought of booking with OYO rooms. Recently I heard a lot about OYO in 'TIE Travel meet’ and thought of exploring the experience.
When I started my research, I got to know that 999 is just for marketing. I couldn't find anything below 2200 Rs. We wanted to stay in Elgin region, I chose the nearest OYO hotel and booked it for ~2500 per night.
We landed in Kolkata and first it was a huge struggle to locate this hotel, because people had no clue of OYO and actual name of hotel was different. On top of that OYO doesn't share hotel phone number. After few calls, we arranged right number. Thanks to our Taxi driver who helped in finding the place. It was on Ray Street.
As we reached the hotel, there was no one on reception and then a gentleman comes in shoddy cloths and asked for booking confirmation. Vibha (my wife) had done the booking. Then we were asked for our identity cards and now the staff wanted us to prove that we are hunsband & wife. Usually I keep scanned copies in my cloud storage, so Passport scan helped. btw, the story started with names - 'Vibha Malhotra' & 'Vijay Kumar Sharma'.
We headed towards the rooms and we came across our first disappointment - the room was stinking and it was extremely small. 2 beds, no chair, a small table and few inches to walk. Photograph shared at (link - OYO team has smartly removed this link) is definitely not showing the room we stayed in. Room was very boring and bedsheet was dirty. First we requested the staff to change the bed-sheet and spray room freshener. After a while we requested an AllOut as we noticed few mosquitoes flying around during day. It was the time when India was seeing maximum number of Dengue patients.
First first day WiFi was not working and from second day, it was extremely slow. When requested to get the wifi checked, the reply was - 'There is no technical staff in hotel and we have raised a complaint which will be handled by wifi company in few days'. We preferred to used our 3G connection as hotspot.
These few incidents on first day made our overall experience very bad. The good part was food. Food served was good, although we only had breakfast at hotel. Breakfast was included in our deal, but there weren't much option. After having disastrous experiences
At OYO rooms you usually get a pouch which has soap, shampoo and other basic stuff. We got 2 pouches on first day and every day, we had to request the staff for another one. Ideally I would expect it every morning which reminder. Am I expecting a lot?
When one goes for vacation or work, one does not want to spend time in resolving basic things at hotel. We were very excited about OYO because they are supposed to offer professional services in old hotels which were not doing things in organized way. I didn't see any difference. It's just a false marketing and OYO needs to understand it.
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