My experience with Indian hotels is pretty dismal when it comes to service. I stayed last week at the Meridien in Chennai and then in Pune, and at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai. Room rates ($300 - $500) were at international levels, service unfortunately was far from it. I arrived at the check in desk in Chennai to find multiple available front desk clerks all diverting me instead three floors up to the executive level check in - totally unnecessary since I would have foregone the convenience of a sit-in chair for expediency.
Once there, the very servile receptionist sent me walking down a long corridor to the room. By the way for some of these palaces turned hotels this can be quite an ordeal since floors have uneven steps and are often finished in marble (marble has the lowest coefficient of drag in floor surfaces). I entered the room to find someone was already using it. Back again, and then apologizing profusely, he rekeyed me for the correct room - this time with a card swipe unit on the other side of the door that ran out of battery later that night and the door had to be broken open ! Similarly in Mumbai, the board room I reserved didn't have a separately controllable ac unit. The technical glitches could have been tolerable, but the clueless and totally helpless and dumbstruck attitudes of the service staff really made it bad.
In my meetings in the board room, the wait staff would come in and in a painfully slow ritual start pouring coffee into each cup - carefully moving fully around the table before going to fetch the milk/cream that once again was merry go rounded. Most of my attendees were severely distracted - which is a waste given the cost of the meeting in terms of total travel $/min of actual meeting. All this though was delivered with an unobtrusively quiet style, and everyone on staff was unbelievably pleasant and wishing to accommodate. One of my colleagues said it well - they are very helpful but it appears its everyone's first day at their job.
Which brings me to the point. To deliver good service you have to, to use an over used cliché, walk a mile in the other person's shoes (or at least try to visualize it). And this is where the whole system comes crashing down in India.
