Category: Business

Review of the Astoria Business Hotel Stay, Madurai

This was a long pending post from my side and I finally found some time to write on this topic. I had a chance to plan a trip to Dhanushkodi and got the opportunity to stay at Astoria Hotel in Madurai for a day. This is a business hotel and I needed a stay only for a day so I chose the hotel.

A few notable things about this hotel are the following

  • Its walkable from the railway station as long as you don’t have too much luggage
  • Its preferred to take an auto from the station if you have kids
  • It is situated somewhat nearby to the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai which is easily reachable by auto within 10 minutes

The front facade of the hotel is one vertical block which mostly present the corridor end windows and the conference room windows on the top floor. There is no access to the terrace as such for visitors.

The entry lounge is good with ample light and seating. This hotel offers 24 hours checkin and checkout with prebooking via multiple travel portals or directly via calling the hotel. I paid nearly about Rs.5000/- per day which is on the steeper side and includes breakfast along with the room. The rooms themselves were well appointed, but were kind of small. Since its a business hotel, the type of travellers mostly expected are the ones who stay in the hotel for about a day and move on to other places near madurai for their business needs.

To this extent the rooms offer the comfort necessary from the relentless heat of Madurai. Thankfully I landed there at a time when Madurai received some rainfall the previous day so the city had cooled down a bit from temperatures of over 38 deg C.

The rooms have thick and large curtains shielding all the harsh light coming in, have a study table with a suitable chair, and a small coffee table with a lounge chair. The beds themselves are a bit soft and springy, the types which you can sink into, though my personal preferences would tend towards slightly harder beds which are not known to aggevate back problems.

The television set is mounted on the wall and the wall also has shelves that hold the glasses and coffee maker. The bathroom is well appointed though the shower is not movable enough making it spray all the water all over the room. It could have been designed better though it does the job for a business traveller. The bath has dispensable soap machines which is the trend nowadays and in my opinion, I prefer this over hundreds of small soap cakes being produced that go a waste on daily basis.

These days hotels have reached a situation wherein you can also say whether or not you want the towels washed or not in order to save water and effort and I highly value this mode of working as it conserves resources.

The cafeteria was good and well appointed in terms of furniture. The breakfast was expensive on the second day, but on the first day it was complementary. I did use the room service once or twice and found it to be good. The people attending to you at the hotel are quick and respond pretty soon to your requests which is what a traveller looks for.

The food itself was good with lots of variety ranging from indian, western, veg and non veg options and was tasty too.

The Astoria Hotel has a view to die for and you can see the Madurai Meenakshi temple very well during the clear nights in the city. The central location, accessibility to Railway station and reasonably close from the airport (~ 10-12km) and a decent variety of rooms, food make this place a business friendly hotel.

If I go again to Madurai, I will stay in Astoria and would recommend this hotel to others too.

Airtel, once fairTel, now unfairTel – shortly finishedTel

Its was winter of 1999. JTM was one of Karnataka‘s best networks. Outgoing call rates were Rs.10/- per minute and incoming about Rs.3 a minute if I am not wrong. I was one of JTM’s customers at that time. Slowly JTM was taken over by Bharti Teleservices. That was the birth of AirTel, a company which would grow to be one of India’s most admired telcos over a period of a decade. They were the best when it came to customer services, while the nearest telcos Spice and Hutch (what is Vodafone now) were by no standards near airtel be it in infrastructure or in customer treatment. Airtel pioneered many a revolution down the line and its venture into landline services made it even more popular.

Spice’s mismanagement and Hutch’s troubled history of having bad networks and bad customer services only made it better and better for Airtel quite inorganically. Over the period of the last couple of years though, India and in particular Karnataka has seen a flurry of entries from many a new telco who are all vying to take a share of Airtel’s pie. Airtel’s troubles have started very recently, and they are compounding it by not brainstorming on the potential failures that are waiting to happen. Some of the key things about Airtel that are beginning to go wrong include and is not limited to the following:

  • Peak hour call jams rendering the service useless

  • Call drops that occur very often leading to frustration amongst users

  • Caller tunes and the amount of agony it has been able to cause for people not really interested in them

  • Ineffective blocking of Telemarketing calls and SMSes that disturb thousands of people day in and out

Of late some more laurels can rest with Airtel:

  • Airtel’s mismanaged and inexperienced customer service centers

  • Don’t care attitude that has set in among the franchisees managing these centers

  • Low level executives making a mess out of technical situations which they are unable to understand or explain

  • Higher level managers who do not follow up on these technical problems that people have

  • Erosion of brand value due to the way these executives perform

  • Airtel’s arrogance in maintaining the same call rates even when competition is eating into its flesh day by day

So then why are people still putting up with Airtel or for that matter any other operator? The answer is very simple to say the least. Its because they want to retain their mobile number without changing it.

For a moment lets then dwell into the case with other operators. Spice has gone one level up in capturing the youth market with a flurry of dual sim based phones and real low calling values. They are also busy fighting with their nearest and best rival Virgin mobile.  Airtel’s arch rival Vodafone is now one level ahead with its famed ZooZoo advertisements addressing the core values of branding in an effective way drawing huge crowds towards the service. Not to forget to mention their Pug ads were also so adorable. Vodafone’s prepaid plans now give you full talktime without any rentals or taxes even sometimes. Their low call quality and tower quality are now replenished to cover most of karnataka state.

Most of Vodafone’s calls don’t drop like before and their connectivity is at an all time high. Vodafone’s takeover of Hutch has only fuelled their appetite for competing with anyone coming their way to maintain their customer base.

With Aircel, MTS and Uninor into the picture now along with Tata Docomo, Airtel’s chances are only slimmer and slimmer day by day. Already Tata’s aggressive pricing plan has forced Airtel to realize its diminishing customer base though very late, and they have also launched the same per second billing plan to save their skin. With MTS being even more aggressive at 1/2 paise per second along with Uninor, Airtel has some serious competition breathing down its neck.

On the CDMA front, Reliance and Tata are ruling the roost and will continue to do so. The only thing then comes back to how to save your mobile number. With number portability in the offing at the year end, from TRAI, at a mere 19 bucks for a switch, its now very easy to retain your number and give your old operator a boot. This only spells more bad news for Airtel who are likely to lose their coveted tag of 10 million customers on India’s no more preferred network. Is it time then for Airtel, who were once FairTel, now unFairTel to go into history as a finishedTel ?

Only time will tell. And it will tell well enough.

If you like this post, please give it a rating!

Related articles by Zemanta

Citibank starts its new tantrums in India

Many of you might have noticed an email sent from Citibank very recently where they have increased the minimum account balance for non salary accounts that one has to maintain in order to be receiving the services of the bank. Citibank was known to be the pioneer in India to introduce online banking, and also for utility bill payments among other useful services. The bank’s image merged well with the minds of young engineers who adopted Citi as a part of their daily life since a decade.

There was also a point in time when Citibank was the new face of banking as against banks such as Canara Bank, SBI which our parents were accustomed to. While salary accounts of Citibank had the zero balance scheme, non salary accounts started off with a minimum account balance of Rs.1000/- in 1999, and grew to Rs.5000 and Rs.10000 subsequently. The email that most of us received a while ago, gave us nightmares when we saw that the new minimum balance for non salary accounts has now been increased to Rs.25000/-. While this kind of amount is perhaps the salary of many engineers across the country and perhaps the savings of a few wealthier folks, the mail also reflects the way Citibank is headed if they continue such tantrums.

Its about time that nationalized banks have increased their image in front of the public, and at a time when Citibank just came out of crisis in the USA, tantrums like these are bound to make people reject Citibank for banking and move to much more reasonable banks in the near future.

I happened to check out on Bank of Baroda, and was pleasantly left surprised at the kind of service they offered though they were still a bit naive to internet ways of banking. What mattered finally was that I could open an account in no time, and was a happy customer of theirs sooner than later. Canara Bank has lately restyled their logo trying to connect more to people as they continue their dream run forward. IDBI has now introduced banking for all to shed their image of only being a loan disbursement company. ICICI is already in the list of the not so good banks to deal with. HDFC and AXIS Banks have retained their image through tough times due to their consistent policies. SBI and its sister banking divisions have enhanced their images through beneficial loan schemes and exchange rates. ING Vysya is about to launch FD products giving 12% interest even in good economy upswings.

With all these banks vying hard to woo people, one wrong move that Citibank has done can start denting its Indian image pretty seriously. Today’s youth connect well with nationalized banks yet again and its only sooner than later that it will be the good old golden period of nationalized banking to the fore yet again.

As for me, I’ve decided to log off from Citibank for obvious reasons. Your choice is not yet made! Think for the longer term and make a wise choice.


Related articles by Zemanta