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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Comments
While singing up a hotel they ensure that hotel offers free wifi, breakfast and oyo kit. But if these services break down, there is no Oyo staff in hotel to fix them.
Because of this, experience at one hotel need not be same as rest.
I tweeted this link to Ritesh (Oyo CEO), marked you as well.
That's the main problem OYO want to solve, so hope they chose right properties and have appropriate processes in place to have consistent experience in all the properties.
On Behalf of OYO Rooms I am really sorry for the bad experience that you had. This is not the sort of service that we strive for and I want to assure you we will look into the issues you have faced and take corrective action.It would really help us if you could share your booking ID with us as that would help us get into the details. We are training the staff at our partner properties to make sure that the experience everywhere is good and inconsistent, however this property seems to have missed the mark. We want to assure you that we will take this feedback back to them as well as streamline our processes to make sure these kind of incidents are minimized.
Thanks
Tarunb
On Behalf of OYO Rooms I am really sorry for the bad experience that you had. This is not the sort of service that we strive for and I want to assure you we will look into the issues you have faced and take corrective action.It would really help us if you could share your booking ID with us as that would help us get into the details. We are training the staff at our partner properties to make sure that the experience everywhere is good and inconsistent, however this property seems to have missed the mark. We want to assure you that we will take this feedback back to them as well as streamline our processes to make sure these kind of incidents are minimized.
Thanks
Tarun
I have already shared booking id on your twitter handle.
Found the booking ID on the twitter handle. Our team will be in touch soon.
Thanks
Tarun
So here is a quick update for all the readers and well wishers - Vibha (my wife) got a call from OYO Rooms. They were apologetic about the whole experience and assured to take appropriate measures to correct it. At the end they offered 300 Rs vouchers :) . Vibha smiled and asked them to keep them money with the company and rather spend it on process improvement.
Here I want to declare that idea to share these experiences is not to get compensation but to express the reality to folks who keep travelling and need good hotels to stay. Hope that companies understand this fact and don't play these silly tactics of bribing the impacted customers.
One thing, why is it they (OYO Rooms) refuse to post a picture of the full bathroom leads me to really have questions. I want to see that there is a western style toilet, I want to see if the bathroom is clean and am I faced with water everywhere with an open shower configuration. It is amazing that any hotel website would even represent any hotel/guesthouse/service apartment without having very CLEAR images of the entire space (bathroom, sitting area, bed, hall leading to the room, the lobby, the restaurant, front view of the hotel and hotel street view. Perhaps this comment will inspire them to upgrade the pictures. Or perhaps it is up to each who book there to post pictures each and every time we stay.