The Hill Resort

Those of my regular readers who may be wondering the relatively long gap between my last post and this one, I was on vacation. A last minute planned vacation always turns out to be more sour than sweet. I learnt this lesson the hard way this time. This was supposed to be a family reunion vacation. So on Thursday morning, I & my family and my brother & his family along with our parents left in our respective cars for Vythri in the Waynad district of Kerala. A timely call from a close friend helped us avoid heading into a big mess that day; as Kerala was on strike because of the hike in Petrol prices on Thursday and we were warned sufficiently in time of possible road blockages and danger. We returned home after travelling for good 40 kilometers. Our holiday finally started on Friday. The drive was cool and enjoyable. But our disappointment and sort of misery started when we reached the resort.


No, no wait! First we reached the resort office which was at a base of a hill. We were told that we cannot take our cars to the resort as it is on the top of a hill and the roads are bad. We had not been told about this when we booked the resort. Anyways we and our luggage were stuffed into two Willis jeeps and take on a very rough 2.5 kilometer uphill drive upto the resort. My old parents and the kids (my 6 year old son Arnab and my 5 months old nephew Ayan) had particularly horrid time. Anyways we reached the resort somehow. We had been promised 2 deluxe cottages and 1 bamboo cottage. Instead of the bamboo cottage they gave us a tree house and when we complained then they told us that is what they meant by bamboo cottage. After freshening-up a bit when we went for lunch we found that the approach steps of the restaurant very steep and further up the hill. This was very inconvenient for my mom whose knees are not in the best of shape. We had been told nothing like this when we had done the enquiry before the booking and the videos on the website hardly conveyed such hardships. We hardly had energy left after the lunch so we decided to idle around in the resort itself and keep sightseeing for the next day. The next day sightseeing was nothing spectacular and was just about ok.

Overall the trip was average except that we had a good family reunion of sorts and enjoyed the drive and some natural beauty of the place. Vythri as a place turned out to be ordinary and the C-hill resort did not quite turn-out to be what we had been promised or what we had expected. However, one thing which stood-out in terms of the resort was the kind of employees that they had and the kind of service they provided. Their people were very cooperative, patiently listened to all our complaints and accommodated most of our requests. For instance, the next day they changed us in to a proper cottage from the dreadful tree house, where insects always gave us an impression that we had encroached their place. Besides, they were very hospitable and served with a smile. This smoothened the rough edges otherwise to a large extent and made our stay in the resort better.

Before we finally left and while paying our bills, I told the owner of the place about the inconveniences that we faced but made it a point to tell her about our appreciation for her people that she had employed in the resort.

Good engaged employees can many a times turn an ordinary place into a better place; however the converse is not true i.e. a good place with poor employees shall always make the experiences of the customer very ordinary. Hopefully the resort shall capitalize on its strength and improve on its infrastructure and transparency in deals to improve customer experiences in future.