The Tower House - 17th Century, Cochin — Hotel in Kerala

The hospitality industry is so profit driven it has lost its perspective on its true purpose. It is rare to find a great hotel but funnily enough it is rare to find a very bad hotel or a bad hotel experience. Neemrana Tower House in Cochin, was a bad experience for my family.||I booked a family room (1 king bed+1 queen bed) with an extra bed for 2 days and nights, for 4 persons from May 13th to 15th, 3+weeks in advance after clarifying details on their websites, other platforms and by calling the Manager operations, Ms. Vinita Vijayan herself. I was told that yes it was available and that booking any later would not guarantee the same facility. The booking was done online in full payment for 3 persons with extra bed charges to be paid at the hotel on arrival. I reconfirmed our booking a few days before our travel as well. At no point were we aware or told that the premises were being renovated.||Come 13th of May, when we reached the hotel just before 4pm after traveling from Pollachi, we noticed that the hotel was under repair with no staff in sight to immediately receive or guide us. I walked into what seemed like the reception, saw no one and then looked further in, to see a lady who was the manager working on her system in her office. I introduced myself and had to ask her for guidance and help for parking and baggage. After 15 minutes of that, we checked in. I even paid up the additional extra bed charges for 2 days. As we were moving to our room, we saw that all the rooms were being renovated. Our's seemed to be the only one ready. On asking about the pool the manager said that it was being renovated too.||Basically apart from meals in our room or the dining area, the rest of the hotel was unusable. On confronting the manager, she said she had informed us and it was updated on the website. Both NOT TRUE, which I double checked. She offered no compensation or even explanation. That's when we got upset and I asked for some reparation of what was an obvious con. She was unapologetic and almost indifferent!||Long story short, we took care of our own comfort. I insisted on a refund, which was promised with no timeline. Refund of the extra bed was offered too of the day we were staying and the next, but the manager refused to commit in a mail. The next morning despite assurance of a formal mail about the refund as payment was not immediately possible, there was nothing. After insisting, a short mail was sent promising 1 day's refund. We checked out at 10.30am.||After about 2 days, 1 day's + 2 days additional bed charges refund was done ||Throughout the stay there were no efforts to make us comfortable. The breakfast was lack lustre and just average with runny scrambled eggs. Definitely not going to trust the Neemrana brand again. Beautiful property,...

The pictures you see on the internet have been taken ages ago. Currently it is in shambles. Extremely old, worn out and poorly managed property in the name of Neemrana, booking this one was clearly a mistake. The location is quite good, near to all excellent cafe, fishing nets etc. other than that, I didnt find any other good points about this place. Talking about the rooms, the dampness is just crazy. You can see the floor, the walls and even the furniture, it is old, I agree, we decided to stay in a colonial heritage property but can we not expect a managed one? The dampness is so bad, we got terrible headache. Out of the four of us who stayed in menezes and cohen respectively, one had sinus while the other one had migraine. They were terrible due to the dampness smell and the way hotel covered up with the insane amount of lemon diffuser. Swimming pool was quite a good experience. Coming to the breakfast, extremely less options as if they are doing us a favour. Poor management also had no response to this poorly managed experience. Pineapple juice literally got over in 10 minutes and they didn’t have a refill. Options are less, not tasty. The cohen room opens to the reception, clearly no privacy so please avoid booking this one. The windows open to a public place and trespassers make noise all day all night. The experience would have been better if it was a better experience. Definitely never going...

This place used to be beautiful and one of our most favourite spots for a staycation.

Recently, we visited the hotel for a night stay and were severely DISAPPOINTED with the state of things.

The room we opted for was the old heritage room. When we checked in, there was some old ice bucket left with old water in it (probably the previous guest’s) that they forgot to remove. The wifi isnt great and since there is no network, you need to rely on the sketchy wifi. Later at night, around 11 pm, the AC just conked off! No idea what happened. Neither did the maintenance guys know what to do.

At 11:30 pm, sleepy & annoyed, we had to pack our stuff and shift rooms. And not like this room was massively better - the AC was pretty old & all night was spent in fanning mosquitoes away from our ears. And then, just as we were about to forget all this, to my utter horror, we found a massive COCKROACH in the room!

And when we complained at the reception, they said - but we cleaned the rooms… Ah nice, so Mr. Cockroach must have evaded your thorough cleaning?!!!

It’s (well, used to be) a great property nevertheless - good location, pretty garden, charming vibe, nice pool. But it is in DIRE need of proper maintenance, upkeep, cleanliness & better staff.

Until they do a complete makeover of the rooms, I wouldn’t recommend wasting your days at Neemrana. Just not worth going through all this trouble, in the middle of...