Pournami Houseboats — Hotel in Thathampally

So here comes the review. The most candid one.

I traveled from Bangalore to Alleppey and stayed at Pournami Houseboat for 1 day I.e 12th oct - 13th oct.

Booking experience: This was the highlight of Pournami houseboat. The lady who takes care of booking is absolutely polite and will help you with everything you need around and the booking process is really smooth. She gave me the reference of the travelling company around and that was really helpful and genuine.

Stay at Boat:

So my reason to book this stay was because I saw this listed as the top 5, luxury boats to book on trip adviser and the google reviews are really good.

The boat check in is allowed around 11:30 am so you have to plan accordingly. We reached boat by 11:30am after receiving the captain’s call from the boat. We had an amazing welcome with Garland and coconut water. ( Which was requested by me) This boat has 4 rooms and I booked the complete boat for my family. The rooms are very average for the price they quote. There are no toiletries and basic washrooms. The interior of the boat is nice specially the upper deck. There is just the dining room on upper deck and some space to chill. All the rooms are on lower deck. We didn’t require the AC as the weather was really pleasant but they would charge 6k extra for AC that too only upper deck. They would take the boat around backwater which was really basic I would say. I was in Ravi’s before and I loved their boat ride but here, the views are basic. The captain will stop the boat for 1 hour in between 2-3pm and this was not communicated and we were baffled why the boat stopped. Initially they mention that boat will only stop post 5:30pm but that’s not the case.

Next day they say some 60mins of excursion and boat ride but it’s hardly 15-30mins. Which is really a waste. You eventually don’t see anything much.

There is nothing to do on the boat basically.

Food:

There is no snack concept in the boat and you are directly served with Lunch. The lunch which is included in package only has 1 fish curry in non veg option. That’s it. They will ask you to buy the seafood from some island they will take you and it’s actually a LOOT!!!

Firstly they took us to some known vendors of theirs and when I highlighted that it’s not fresh and we won’t buy from here, there was a sudden shift in the attitude of the staff. Eventually he took us to some other vendors and we bought few items for 10k( no other option) There he started acting like if we have to follow orders from staff not the other way around. He was rushing us on everything. Would just ignore our requests and then this one staff got really rude to the kid and then I reported it to the owner.

They immediately took action and changed the staff which I really appreciate.

High tea was nice and it was complimented with one local snack.

Dinner: Dinner again they just have chicken curry as an option and you’ll have to buy other items.

Post dinner, we were chilling on the upper deck and later on 2 of the staff joined us and sat with us for as long as they could. I asked them if there is a reason or they want to convey something but nothing and it was weird because we were having our family time and I really didn’t like staff presence. These people mostly sleep on the upper deck so you actually don’t have a place to chill or party at night without staff disturbances.

Overall: This boat is not worth of the quoted price and their review highlights of staff is very pretentious!! It might have been good previously because I don’t think people can put so many fake reviews but the whole...

We were 3 families (Total 12 (5 kids)) on kerala trip. After going through the reviews on trip advisor we settled on Pournami houseboat for our Alleppey house boat stay for 21/05/2017. Booking process was smooth with Ms. Parvathy Prakash (Pournami Booking coordinator) and the amount was fixed with all levies and taxes. We made advance payment of @25% and agreed to pay the remaining amount at houseboat. Till advance payment we were under the impression that Pournami accepts 3 modes of payment a) All cards b) Paypal invoice c) NEFT/Cash deposit which was mentioned in their booking terms. However after the advance payment during the confirmation mail all the modes of payment were removed and only Cash payment was mentioned which we did not notice. We reached Alleppey @13:30 as against 11:30 checkin time and we hurried to the houseboat and requested them to start our trip since we had already lost time. They told me they will not start the houseboat until we make full payment. I immediately transferred the total amount online through my mobile and showed them the confirmation to their coordinator (Mr. Hari) present there. Still they were not ready to start our trip. After due deliberations with office staff who was very rude on phone and was shameless asking us to pay rs. 1600/- in addition to the amount already paid as tax since I had made payment online. I understood that I had to make payment in cash and not online transfer. I did not agree to this. The staff onboard was reluctant to start our trip until they get confirmation from office staff. They delayed our trip by 1 more hour and then started after they received confirmation from their senior personnel. They did not even bother that we are all families with small kids. This type of behavior is not expected from Pourmani who claim they are premium service providers and charge also heavily for the same. Our trip started at @14:45 and they parked the boat @17:00. Imagine what pain we have gone through with such time wastage inspite of paying premium amount. I don’t have complaint @ boat or staff available on board. We really enjoyed a lot onboard. The review submitted by me in hard copy on house boat is strictly regarding onboard house boat service and not about the booking process. My only point is our government is pushing on digitization in India (Digital India initiative) and the fake companies like these still want to transact in cash and thereby...

A nice experience that should be an unbelievable 5* experience.

The positives - what a wonderful experience it is going along seeing the locals go about their daily lives. Scenery is special with stunning views. And the food is delicious.... really good cook!! It did feel a bit extravagant having just two of us on the huge boat.

The less positives. Crew tried to sell us "extras" like a massage, another boat tour, beer etc. It was rather irritating and I'd rather have had the sales pitches at the start of the trip to not spoil it. We gave in on the seafood and went to their choice of supplier... the tiger prawns were expensive for UK prices and I'm paying less in an exclusive 5* resort!! The seller kept telling me a price per kg yet making up final figures on his calculator. I ultimately gave in and paid the tourist price.... thankfully the cook onboard cooked them beautifully and they were the highlight of the meal. If u do go to the card swipe friendly fish seller do check how fresh the fish is... the prawns we got were deep in ice and looked fresh but tbh the fish didn't look that great (cloudy eyes a give away).

Overnight I didn't sleep great due to our onboard rodent stowaways on the roof of the boat.... however this was all completely forgotten having a fantastic breakfast drifting on the lake.

Overall this is an essential activity to do in the area and with a bit of fine tuning (less sales) Pournami could be one...