Rio Boutique — Hotel in Goa

100% Recommended!

SUMARY: I would definitely recommend Rio Boutique! I loved the stay there. Staff is very helpful. Special Thanks to Paresh & Tripti ma'am for the extended help! Detailed review below.

LOCATION: Around 6 KMs from Candolim beach, it is situated in a good locality, easily accessible by road. Has a General stop right opposite to it in case you need anything.

RENTALS TIP: For 2-Wheelers/Cars rental, Cabs they have contacts. We got a 2-wheeler from Dilan Fernandes, hotel's contact, very nice guy, no hassle with him. He took an ID & 1K deposit & new Yamaha Fascino at 400/day. Rates vary in Goa, they range from 300-500 for a 2-wheeler, depending upon condition & season.

FOOD: Rio offers breakfast, it was good. Timings 7:15-10:15. Staff got perplexed at peak time, with stuff running out & they taking some time to match up, but it was ok, not much of a hassle. They offered: 1 variety of packed juice, 1 variety of cut fruits, 2 types of Jams, Butter, Maida & Wheat bread, Toaster/Grill, Tea & Coffee, 1 North Indian food item like Plain Parantha/Tomato-Potato curry or Aaloo Puri, 1 South Indian item like Upma or Poha, 2 varieties of egg: Masala Omelette & Boiled eggs. I am a foodie, hence such a review for food :D

HYGIENE: Basic hygiene & cleanliness standards were properly maintained. !!!ATTENTION!! HOTEL STAFF PLEASE NOTE: They clean the room in your absence by default, which I did NOT like. Be default, staff should clean the room in our presence, and only when we explicitly tell that the staff can clean the room in our absence, it should be done. I conveyed it to housekeeping staff, forgot to convey to manager while checking-out. I hope they see this & think about correcting it.

SAFETY: Locality & premises is safe & sound!

CABS TIP: Taxi union cabs charge quite more than it should be. Best option, where you can save money also is GoaMiles app. They are very helpful too, very good customer service. e.g. Taxi union cab from Rio to Aarambol was around Rs1600. Whereas I got it in around Rs1000 from...

Hotel is located in a very congested area. I got stuck for 15 minutes right outside the hotel due to a traffic jam.

I was forced to pay for 4 nights stay in advance and their service was very pathetic. There was no buffet instead one had to place an order. Dosa and idly were not available due to “maintenance” of the tava!

When I objected to the breakfast service being slow and an excuse for a buffet, with just toast to serve for yourself, they gave a funny reason saying there were no guests therefore I will have to order to get from their limited offerings they had. I had to choose between oily puri and bhaji and Upma because they do not like to waste food. But they don’t mind us wasting our money on them.

I had to survive on 2 toasts and a tasteless tea.

When I asked for upma to be served I was given one plateful and barely cooked with lumps of flour. This was after 20 minutes of waiting time! I obviously could not eat uncooked food.

This is an unusual arrangement and I had never experienced a service of this kind in my 60+ years of life.

We (my wife and I) checked out stating that we don’t want to be held hostage to their poor service. We were made to jump through hoops during checkout as they claimed they didn’t know the process. Eventually they made us sign some disclaimer and allowed us to check out. I was told that they will not refund the money. When I told them that I wanted to speak to the owner as everyone only read rule books to me and not listen to any logical reasoning and how unjustified their action was. Finally I told them to keep my money as a ransom I had to pay for my freedom!

I would never recommend this hotel to anyone. I will also go to the consumer forum to get my money back. A highly...

We had done booking for 1 day in this hotel in April 2020. Due to lockdown we could not avail this booking. We called on hotel numbers provided for refund, some concern person confirmed that we will not get refund but we can use this booking later on by just paying Rs. 1000 extra. So recently when we were in goa, we called hotel for booking. But the manager denied that they had not given any such confirmation. We asked the manager that we wanted to speak to some higher authority. He spoke to his revenue manager and later on informed us that he had sent emails to all the customers who's booking were cancelled due to lockdown to use the booking paying 1000 rs extra till September 2020. As we all know it was not possible in september to travel goa from mumbai. We knew he was just lying and talking all nonsense. He was changing his statements everytime. We asked the manager what about our booking amount, he was like I dont know. Like what the hell is this the way you respond to your customers. We just left the hotel as we could see the manager was just lying to not helping us. I did not expect such response from a hotel which has 4...