Guest User
March 1, 2024
I have stayed here several times over the years and remember it as a lovely calm, quiet hotel with great staff. The staff are still lovely but the place is not. Due to requesting a change, I was shown a variety of rooms before settling on the least bad (let me emphasize that none of them were what I would call 'good') 4th floor street facing - room 415. When the music from the Communiti bar next door kicked in later I realized I had made the wrong choice but was too tired to do anything about it. The street noise and the bar noise were both very loud in the room and the double glazing just wasn't effective. In hindsight, I probably should have gone with the 2nd floor pool view room –the incredibly loud hammering and drilling from the renovation in the room next door would at least have stopped at 6pm and would have had a day off on Sunday. The two rooms I was shown that faced west both had a terrible smell of damp. This is slightly worrying as at least one of them had been recently renovated. Coming back to Room 415... it's not one of the 'new' rooms so there is still old stained carpet (photo) and slightly worryingly piles of some mysterious white powder in the corners of the bathroom (see photo) – I didn’t even want to ask what it was … The dehumidifier in the corridor of the 4th floor (see photo) had the tank full of water for the 48 hours I was there, therefore was not operational ... In any case, a dehumidifier of that size would not be very effective in such a large space. The front desk had said they'd be in touch if another pool view room became available but when I asked the next day the woman on duty didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Plus points: the Indian food in the restaurant was good and, as above, the staff are lovely. They deserve better. Overall, it seems to me to show a lack of respect to the guests – and to the staff – to be persisting in renting out these substandard rooms. And I was very surprised to find a hotel under the Taj umbrella offering this level of suboptimal experience. I had really wanted to write a nice review… and to spend a nice couple of nights somewhere which has very good memories for me before heading home. But it wasn’t to be.