Mermaid Island Beach Resorts — Hotel in Tamil Nadu

Horrible experience with the manager while booking! Please stay away of this hotel 🙏 By looking wise, view wise, location wise it's nice but if you a kind of guy who care about hospitality of the hotel, their behavior and service towards customer then please avoid 🙏

Now, coming to my issue. I searched the price and availability first in google and saw there are 'different' price is showing for different sites (including their own site - Stayflexi) for the same room. Thats pretty much common for all the hotels you search in google. But what make me surprise is the price difference between their website or offline (by call) with the other private website (like Make My Trip, Agoda etc) is 'huge'. Ex : If their price 10,000 for two nights for the same room where in MMT I just need to pay 5000 rs. So i choose the site (MMT). Before booking, for a confirmation I called them and asked the price about the room (just to double check if the price showing in google is correct). They told the same 10000 for two nights. So, finally we make the dicision and booked the room in MMT with full paid (5k) for two nights. Now the story is starting!

After booking complete, I get successful booking confirmation mail from MMT and also from their 'own web site'. Still I thought to call them and confirm about the booking (it's always safe to get confirmation from the hotel especially if you booked from other website). I did the same and got an unexpected response. The hotel manager (a lady) first keep in hold for long time and talk with other customers, I didn't say anything and understood their job also. After 5 mins she responds and told that there is no booking with my name or booking id for the check in day. I get little surprise and then thought may be it's not updated yet into their website or they might not check properly their emails and all. So, I told let me send you the screen shot of booking in WhatsApp and recheck it, they agreed.

I sent them the screen shots (from the website as well as the mail everything I have). They still denying it and ask me to give some time. I waited for whole day and didn't msg or call them again. Next day till afternoon I haven't get any msg or call from them, so I called them again but they didn't pick up my call. I called again after sometime but same results. I msg them in WhatsApp and tell them clearly that I am worrying now as a customer - 1) I am taking my family with me so don't want any trouble once we reach there. 2) I have paid whole amount online so not sure if that's not booked from their end I would get the refund or not. They continue ignoring my msg and finally they pick up my call after several times next day. When I asked about the status the person (a man) said that "Sir, there is no booking with your name, and someone already booked the room on the day, so you get 'over booked' by the site. Please contact Make My Trip and cancel your booking". This statement make me really worry and I was like how that can happen actually, what kind of story is this. Then I told them if that is the case how it was showing available on MMT and your site as well? how you said yesterday that room is available when I called and asked for the price? They didn't have any answer and forcing me to talk with MMT customer care. I straightly cut the call and called the MMT customer care. They took my concern well and work on that. Very next day I got call from MMT executive and they said that they have talked to the hotel multiple times, at 1st they were saying the same story which they told to me and after multiple follow ups they agreed my booking and confirmed it. After all this nobody will have trust on this kind of hotel. I told MMT to cancel my booking.

I thought to express my disappointment & tell them that I cancel it now due to this kind of behavior and service. What surprise me again is their arrogant response.They not even shown any apologies,they disrespect & behave...

Worst. First of all its in TamilNadu not in Pondicherry. Not at all advisable for family and also for bachelors. Pictures shown in booking web portals are only outside view of the building. They have not shown any pictures of the inside of the rooms in any of the booking web-portals. Even after booking is confirmed from agoda.com , two days before the stay, they call for advance payment. Their statement is “if you dont pay advance, the booking will be cancelled”. Then my question is why web portal such as booking.com, agoda.com etc is required ? No proper road for getting there. They will provide a pdf map while we call for the location. Even google map cannot find their location. It is situated in a place which is very dirty and also very congested in a very local area and lots of stray dogs will be welcoming you when you reach there. Rooms , are very dirty. Bathroom is like hell. Western closet is not fixed properly, you can feel a shaking effect while you sit on it. And bathroom doors are in a state of fall down at anytime. Very congested varanda and staircase. Balcony view is good. Have sea view. Also you will get an opportunity to see local area’s waste water bund/pool and waste thrown by locals in bulk.at night, cats and monkeys come to see you. It feels doors will also fall down at anytime Bedrooms are also congested, hardly a person can walk around the bed. A/C is only for bedrooms and not anywhere else. Poor Room Service. Rooms are not cleaned during the stay. No mirrors. Plastic plates and plastic glasses. No food. They provide a menu which is a local hotel. They provide complimentary breakfast but menu was same for our whole 3 days stay. A small fridge is available but when you open it, it will give you a bad smell and with that and worst view of inside of you will not keep anything in it. Parking facilty is there, but you have to move the car for other cars to move from parking. That lucky car was mine. Outside local peoples / neighbors can have clear view through the window glasses from outside. No curtains at drawing room. By mistakenly i have changed dress at first day and realized at that night that everything can be viewed from outside. We cannot call it as a drawing room its a small space where one person can hardly stand and great thing is that, in the drawing room you can find an ugly washbasin where water drips. Its worth 500Rs. Per day. But they charge lot lot more than that Only advantage is that you will get nice sea view. Which is really good. my intension to write all these is because one who does not know about pondicherry and by mistakenly stay here by seeing the pics what they have shared , your whole trip will be physiologically ruined only because of this stay/ property .

check the pictures...

I went here with my family of 4. We had booked a sea view family room. First thing to take care is to not follow google maps if you plan to arrive here by car. The map took us into some road that was too narrow for my car. I later realized there is another way that's more suited to cars. So, rule number 1: Call the hotel and ask for directions from main road if you arrive in car. Now while the name includes the word "resort", it is rather a home stay/Hotel that provides descent breakfast with a great view of the ocean. There is some space available for car parking, but it's a small place and I found it bit of a circus to park my car inside. It can squeeze in 4 cars at best. There is however another parking just behind the main building that can accommodate 4 more cars. We got a 2-floor family room with 2 bathrooms. We found it perfect in terms of size and amenities and is good value for money. There is Wifi but I found it not fast enough and I often relied on my phone network most of the time. They have room service for food which we tried on the day we arrived. This is the part I didn't like much as the service is too slow and the portion sizes were way smaller than I expected. I would suggest one to explore nearby as there are plenty of restaurants in Pondi at every nook and corner. They serve complimentary breakfast including idly, Vada, uttapam/sevige with 2 chutneys and sambar. Bread toast is included as well. So it’s an all vegetarian breakfast menu that’s pretty ok. I found the chutneys a little bland and would have preferred a bit more kick and spice in them. It was satisfying, but an option of boiled egg or omelette would have also been nice. The staff can speak good english and they were very polite and friendly, always ready to assist in whatever we needed. Kudos to their service and my thanks to all the staff who made our stay a pleasant one. There is a great view of the sea from 1st floor room and we enjoyed the experience of sleeping amidst the sound of waves at night. I would say this was as close as we could get with a room closest to the sea. There is a beach nearby the Hotel and we went to the one on the right of Hotel called Serenity beach if I am right. The beach itself is not that clean. But we went here for a dip anyway as the water was clean. The place is around 6 kms away from city centre and it takes around 30min each time you venture out to places like french colony & rock beach. Overall a nice place to stay in Pondi and offers a great...