Hotel Review: St Regis Mumbai
I managed a 2-night stay at the St. Regis, Mumbai in the very end of December. I was traveling on work, was fortunate that my client has a heavily-discounted corporate rate negotiated with the hotel, as the last minute booking rates of Rs 12k a night (which were what applied to me) seemed quite prohibitive. I've been wanting to stay here just so I could find a suitable alternate to the ITC Grand Central.
St Regis Mumbai Exterior view
The St. Regis Mumbai has a short, yet chequered, history. Started as the Shangri-la, it operated for a few months before Shangri-la Hotels & Resorts, the brand owner, pulled out of the management operations. The owners of the hotel (Phoenix Mills, on whose land the hotel is situated) then ran the hotel as the Palladium, for a few more months before it became a St. Regis operated hotel, effective 1 September 2015. But anyway, on with the trip report...
Before I begin, my apologies for the low quality of some of the images. I use my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (yes, it is ancient!) because it is convenient and takes some great pictures, but the lighting was poor and I was low on battery, which meant I had to conserve flash usage.
I reached the hotel at almost 10 pm, after a delayed flight. After a series of security checks, we got to the foyer, where my luggage was taken charge of immediately, and I was handed a counterfoil to claim it back.
St Regis Mumbai foyer
St Regis Mumbai entrance
Once in, there was an unmanned desk, which I'm told is used for registering participants to any banquets. Having said that, the decor was a taste of things to come.
St Regis Mumbai ground floor welcome area
I then took the elevator up to the 9th floor, where the hotel starts (I assume floors 1-8 are occupied by the mall, whose property the hotel is part of).
St Regis Mumbai main lobby
I was surprised that there were only 2 check-in desks (including one for SPG members) and more surprised that at well past 10 pm, both desks were occupied!
St Regis Mumbai check-in area
After check-in, there's a separate elevator bank that one needs to take to the restaurants, bar, swimming pool, and the rooms. Here's the decor en route!
St Regis Mumbai interiors
I had a room on the 17th floor, and given the lateness of the evening, decided to head straight to the room and order room service, instead of going to the restaurant.
The hallways and foyers are quite large, as you can see.
St Regis Mumbai elevator area
St Regis Mumbai hallway to rooms
Also, each floor has a waiting area near the elevator, which can also be used for meeting people that you don't want to invite to your room.
St Regis Mumbai elevator waiting area
After a few pictures, I reached my room.
St Regis Mumbai Room view from entrance
A few minutes after I got to my room, there was a knock on the door. A hotel staff introduced herself as the butler for the floor, who would be able to help with any particular requests. In fact, the St. Regis brand prides itself on this service - to the point that there is no housekeeping line on the telephone. Only the butler service, apart from concierge and in-room dining. The staff member informed me that the butler services includes a complimentary tea / coffee service at any time, which relaxed me a little bit. I can't survive without my morning cup of black coffee! But more about that later.
Moving on...here are pictures of the room.
And here's the mini-bar and coffee amenities, which I'll come to later.
St Regis Mumbai minibar
There was a lot of storage space too, both in the wardrobes and under the luggage rack.
St Regis Mumbai closet and safe
Coming to the mini-bar, it was reasonably stocked.
That metal thing on the left of the lower drawer is an ice bucket. Which brings me to my first annoyance at this hotel. I'd asked the butler service for a bucket of ice, so I could chill some drinks I was planning to enjoy in my room (they didn't have an ice-room in the hotel). I called thrice after this as reminders, and when the ice eventually arrived, it was a good 45 minutes after I'd made my first request. And this is a hotel that has two bars!
On with the mini-bar and amenities. There wasn't much in terms of the tea/coffee amenities. In fact, I think the St Regis Mumbai believes that all guests should have only tea. There was ABSOLUTELY no coffee in the room.
I called the butler service to ask them for coffee sachets, but they said they don't have any. Instead, they'd be able to give me coffee powder for the plunger, using which is an absolute waste of 10 minutes if you ask me. Naturally, I found this to be quite perplexing!
St Regis Mumbai tea amenities
On to the bath area.
St Regis Mumbai dresser
I ordered some room service, and I quite liked the presentation of the stuff!
St Regis Mumbai Dan-dan noodles, mushroom and breads
I should mention at this point, that it was almost an hour since I'd checked in, and my luggage hadn't arrived yet. In fact, my bags were delivered to me after the room service dinner was!
I asked for some hard pillows, since the standard-issue pillows didn't meet my requirements. These were delivered in due course, and I had a good night's sleep.
Morning views from the room were fantastic!
And smog notwithstanding, I got to have a look at the swimming pool from my room.
St Regis Mumbai exterior view
I got ready and headed down for breakfast at the Seven Kitchens coffee shop which is located on the mezzanine level 9M.
St Regis Mumbai lobby view from above
St Regis Mumbai coffee shop
The place is named so because there are 7 different food counters / stations, one each for:
Over the 2 days, I managed to sample all of the major offering types for breakfast.
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - fruits and juices
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Bakery and breads
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Cereal and fruit
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - fruits and juices
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Continental
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Cereals
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Continental
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Oriental
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Oriental
As a bonus, there was also ice-cream for breakfast. Now you don't expect a foodie to not eat his ice cream, even if it is for breakfast, right?
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Ice cream!
There's a lot of seating space at the restaurant, which is great, considering the morning traffic of both business and vacation travelers.
St Regis Mumbai Breakfast - Seating
The restaurant staff were quite attentive at breakfast on both mornings, providing table service and refills of coffee and water quite promptly. Overall, the F&B experience was very positive here.
Something interesting happened on the 2nd evening of my stay. I'd taken the butler's word for their services, and rang them up to request for a cup of coffee, as I was back from work earlier than usual. Only then was I informed that it would not be complimentary - that was only till noon. This came to me as a bit of a surprise, because the noon cutoff wasn't something I was told before. However, I mentioned to them that, but chose to let it go and ordered for coffee to be charged to my room. Finally, coffee arrived in a few minutes, but with no cheque to signoff. Then the butler informed me that they'd waived charges. Strange!
St Regis Mumbai coffee service
Now I can't see why the hotel would make such an issue out of coffee - not once, but twice on this stay alone (remember, no coffee sachets in the room for the morning coffee).
All in, while I had a rather decent stay, I wasn't too happy about three things:
I'm not sure if I'm overreacting. Maybe any one of those things, or even two, might have been OK - just a small blot on the overall experience. But I think for a brand such as St Regis, these could've been avoided. Nonetheless, I provided feedback to the hotel on these lines, and have had their personal (not automated) acknowledgement of the issues I faced, but nothing beyond that.
Overall, what could've been an 8 or 9 out of 10, ended up being a 6 (maybe 7 if I was to be generous).
The St Regis Mumbai is an SPG category 4 hotel, requiring 10,000 Starpoints for an award night. While immediate bookings for a base category room could cost upwards of Rs 12,000++ a night, 2-week advance bookings are more reasonably priced at around Rs 7,600++ a night, which may make this a sub-optimal use of Starpoints if your stay dates are firm and known in advance.
Have you stayed at this hotel before? Do share your experiences.
- Breads
- Live counter for waffles, pancakes and french toasts
- Fruit and juices
- Cereals
- Oriental
- Continental
- South Indian
Over the 2 days, I managed to sample all of the major offering types for breakfast.
As a bonus, there was also ice-cream for breakfast. Now you don't expect a foodie to not eat his ice cream, even if it is for breakfast, right?
There's a lot of seating space at the restaurant, which is great, considering the morning traffic of both business and vacation travelers.
The restaurant staff were quite attentive at breakfast on both mornings, providing table service and refills of coffee and water quite promptly. Overall, the F&B experience was very positive here.
Something interesting happened on the 2nd evening of my stay. I'd taken the butler's word for their services, and rang them up to request for a cup of coffee, as I was back from work earlier than usual. Only then was I informed that it would not be complimentary - that was only till noon. This came to me as a bit of a surprise, because the noon cutoff wasn't something I was told before. However, I mentioned to them that, but chose to let it go and ordered for coffee to be charged to my room. Finally, coffee arrived in a few minutes, but with no cheque to signoff. Then the butler informed me that they'd waived charges. Strange!
Now I can't see why the hotel would make such an issue out of coffee - not once, but twice on this stay alone (remember, no coffee sachets in the room for the morning coffee).
All in, while I had a rather decent stay, I wasn't too happy about three things:
- the two incidents with coffee
- the delayed baggage delivery to the room
- the delayed ice bucket delivery to the room.
I'm not sure if I'm overreacting. Maybe any one of those things, or even two, might have been OK - just a small blot on the overall experience. But I think for a brand such as St Regis, these could've been avoided. Nonetheless, I provided feedback to the hotel on these lines, and have had their personal (not automated) acknowledgement of the issues I faced, but nothing beyond that.
Overall, what could've been an 8 or 9 out of 10, ended up being a 6 (maybe 7 if I was to be generous).
The St Regis Mumbai is an SPG category 4 hotel, requiring 10,000 Starpoints for an award night. While immediate bookings for a base category room could cost upwards of Rs 12,000++ a night, 2-week advance bookings are more reasonably priced at around Rs 7,600++ a night, which may make this a sub-optimal use of Starpoints if your stay dates are firm and known in advance.
Have you stayed at this hotel before? Do share your experiences.
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