OYO 16561 Surya Holiday Home

The person who called himself the Owner was rude and didn’t know how to talk to us. The staff were very unprofessional too. Our room and bathroom were dirty and unhygienic, the rooms smelled awful, and there was no water. Electricity could go out at any time, and they wouldn’t take responsibility for it. It wasn’t worth the money. Never visit this hotel.

There wasn’t an intercom in the room, and the food was really expensive. The hotel itself was very dirty. Our room and bedsheets were filthy, and the bathroom wasn’t clean either. It didn’t even have an exhaust fan.

The only reason I’m giving it three stars is the lovely terrace at the end of a long corridor, and how cooperative the owner was when we switched hotels after our first day. The pictures on booking.com gave us a completely misleading impression. Our room was dim, with paint peeling off the walls, and the tiny bathroom had no lake view at all.

The worst part was how much we paid for so little. The hotel charged Rs 4000 for a double bed room and Rs 8000 for a deluxe family room, and was highly overpriced. Hotel Shalimar and others are more reasonably priced, better located and much better managed. Neighborhood hotel managers, fellow hotel occupants and several cab drivers told me the general feedback was pretty bad, that it was highly unpopular and got booked only in peak season when other hotels were already full. I ignored the negative reviews on booking.com and regretted it. My Overall rating 0/5. The location wasn’t as good as the owner claimed, and getting there meant climbing 100-150 very steep, filthy stairs in an old, dirty building. No lift. There was no electricity for one full night, and no power backup. The stairs had no lights at night, and some people even fell. Sewage and drainage ran by the entrance, and there was sometimes a smell of urine and stool throughout the hotel. The rooms were tiny, unlike the pictures, and had insects and spiders on the beds. The blankets stank and were dirty. The wooden furniture was old and broken, shaking badly when you sat on it. My room had no permanent roof, just a tin sheet covered with temporary bricks and cement. A small terrace was shared by four rooms. There was no Wi-Fi or internet connection, no new soap, only a used one, no shampoo, toilet paper or toothpaste. It felt very unsafe for families because it got extremely dark when the power was out. Drinking water wasn’t supplied unless you asked. Breakfast took two hours to arrive. The manager kept asking for money without providing good service. I felt cheated by fraudulent, exaggerated claims made over the phone and on the website. The owner, Kshitiz Agarwal, has written reviews of his own hotel on Google and other travel websites while pretending to be a customer. To me, that confirms how dirty and poor the hotel is. Cheap tactics won’t get him anywhere.