An one-night stay at the Intercontinental Marine Drive, Mumbai was my first overnight stop during my
crazy travel week. It was admittedly a rather expensive booking, but it had several things going for it - (a) my work was of extreme priority for the client, who (b) was therefore willing to pay for it, and (c) I decided to help the cause of my Big Win promotion with IHG. My offer under that promotion is only for 34,000 bonus points, but I'd already had two stays - at the Crowne Plaza, Gurgaon and the Holiday Inn Mumbai International Airport. So I figured, why not at the Intercontinental.
As I mentioned, the price of a room night was pretty steep, at $170 (or over Rs 11k a night). But it did have the promise of a butler, and a complimentary massage.
I have my doubts about how authentic an IHG experience this hotel provides. Firstly, the check in staff didn't even know that I was a platinum member. In fact, they asked if I was a member of IHG Rewards Club, which I thought was rather strange. Apparently,
it doesn't turn up on their systems, which I find absolutely ridiculous and hard to believe. Anyway, I gave them my account number so they could retrieve the information. I was then told that as a Platinum member, I would be given a room upgrade, to a room that has - and I quote -
"the bay view and the city view". Like this one.
In fact, it was
this one. Not exactly the greatest view of the city. Oh, well...
I was escorted up to my room, where the actual check-in and form-filling took place. That's when they asked me for my email address. Again, quite unexpected, and again, the explanation was that
it doesn't turn up on their systems. Maybe IHG should get them better connected to their own systems!
Anyway, here are some pictures. In all, a rather decent room.
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| View from door, upon entering the room |
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| The whole room - TV, work desk, couch+Ottoman, bed |
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| TV, work desk |
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| View from the other end |
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| Just another picture of the room |
In particular, I liked the scented bedsheets.
And the bathroom was quite spacious as well.
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| View from the room - there's a glass separator, that you can also see in the pic below (on the left of the picture) |
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| WC, and the shower cubicle, with the bath tub to the right |
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| Amenities..."With compliments"??? |
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| Toiletries |
All of these pictures were taken when Sujit - the assigned butler for the room - came over, and handed me my welcome drink, which was a glass of rather insipid
Jal Jeera. A bit too late for welcomes?
And he posed with eyes closed as I took a picture of him!
Unfortunately, I had to meet a friend that evening, and so I didn't get to use the massage service, which is really a 20-minute session with a choice of a foot or a neck & back massage. Clearly there isn't much space on the property for a spa, and so these services are done in-room. I also couldn't stay long enough for breakfast, as I had an early flight to catch.
However I did like some of their collection of over 50 music CDs and a similar number of DVDs, which one could request for. The room has a Bose music player as well as a DVD player. I chose Simon & Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park for the evening!
In all, it was a rather expensive night's stay for not using much of the facilities at the hotel. In all, I question the value for money proposition for this stay, and really the only thing that adds any value could have been the location. But I guess when someone else is paying for it, and there are points to play for, we all do crazy things, don't we?
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