Hotel Review- Grand Hyatt Mumbai

After seeing the pictures of the Hotel above (all taken courtesy of the Grand Hyatt Mumbai website) you may already have made up your mind that the hotel looks amazing, and you'd be right- It does. The Grand Hyatt in Mumbai is sleek and modern, with all the promise of bringing the New World charm and decor to Old world Santa Cruz, Mumbai. Unfortunately, that is where the buck stops- at the promise of it being something great. I have stayed at the Grand Hyatt before a few years back, and had absolutely no issues with the hotel or the service, but my most recent trip to Mumbai was a completely different experience.
As I mentioned in my post a few days back I'd gone to Goa for a wedding and returned to Mumbai to spend 3 nights  attending another wedding there. As I checked into the hotel, tired and sleep deprived, I decided to force myself to stay awake till the night's festivities began. I met two of my friends at the coffee shop downstairs and had to wait painfully long to be served. Apparently the evening before they had waited close to half an hour before leaving as nobody even came to take their order, so we were lucky somebody decided to show up at all. After that the evening went into night and I returned exhausted, having only slept 3 hours the night before, at around 3 AM to my room. The hotel was very well aware that I was in town for a wedding and I had chatted with them and told them how tired I was while checking in. Imagine my surprise then when I was woken up the next morning at 8 AM with the sound of drilling and construction taking place in the room above me. I called them and complained and had to repack my stuff so that they could move me after I stepped out of the hotel.
I left to run errands and returned late in the evening so I could get ready for the main pheras for the wedding. I entered my new room only to find it extremely small and cramped, in fact MUCH smaller than the room I was previously in. I called them and they insisted the room was the same size (it was not) and I asked them to move me anyway. The third room I was in (during which time I completely missed the wedding ceremony with the time they took to move me) was larger and I got dressed and ran down quickly. I entered my room late that night, feeling like I was entering an ice box. I increased the temperature of the room and changed and got ready for bed, assuming that the room would get warmer in time. I woke up in the middle of the night with my teeth chattering and went over to the AC- the temperature was 16 degrees! I tried to cover myself up and went back to bed and woke up and called housekeeping early next morning and asked them how to turn off the AC for a while as I couldn't figure it out- they said they'd send someone as it couldn't be done via the regular dial. Next thing I know I have 3 men entering my room with a large ladder coming in to turn the AC off! I called downstairs, by this time completely having lost my temper, and asked them to just have the AC fixed while I was away, as I didn't want to spend the few hours I was there in my room dealing with workers fixing things. I also told them that the digital clock by my bed was showing the wrong time so both things should be fixed while I was gone. I informed them of my leaving the room when I did, so they could take care of things, only to return to an ice box with the clock by my bed still showing the wrong time. I called and yelled some more and they sent one person up to change the temperature in the room. I told him the temperature should be around 20-21 degrees, and he fixed it (while I had to wait around for him) and then I changed and left. That night I slept fitfully as the temperature in my room climbed to 25 degrees and was way too hot for me to bear.
Now in all of this I had spoken to the duty manager who had INSISTED things would be taken care of and all my problems would be sorted while I was away from the room. NOTHING happened. In that conversation I'd even told her that other friends had been complaining about the hotel and we had established that their thought process was, "people are going to come stay with us anyway so who cares about customer service?!"- an idea she vehemently denied. At the end of the 3 nights, nothing had been done to make me more comfortable, no action had been taken, and I was so glad to be leaving the hotel, vowing never to return!
If you're looking to stay in a hotel in the suburbs of Mumbai, choose the elegant J W Marriot or one of the other hotels in that area. The Grand Hyatt has got to be one of the worst experiences I've had in a hotel EVER.. and considering I travel a lot, that's saying quite a lot. There was no consistency in the rooms either, as my first room had an ipod docking station, ironing board and iron in the room, whereas by the end of it, the room just had the bare bones basics. They obviously do not care about their guests at all, and given the efficiency and fabulous service you get at hotels like the Taj and Oberoi hotels in Town, this type of attitude is not at all the norm of other hotels in India. Why Grand Hyatt feels it can get away with it is beyond me. I just know one thing- I won't be returning there anytime soon!
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