During my visit to Fort Kochi last month, I stayed in 16th and 17th century bungalows that also hosted the likes of Vasco da Gama, governers of Portugese and Dutch administration, a French Admiral and a British Major.
About a month ago, universe conspired that I should take a holiday in Fort Kochi. I had scheduled a work-related visit to Cochin and my air tickets were all booked. Just as the dates approached–I still hadn’t planned my accommodation–I was invited by Neemrana to visit and experience their two non-hotel hotels in Fort Kochi. And two days before departure, all my work commitments in Kochi were cancelled, enabling me to enjoy an undisturbed beach-side holiday.
My first day at Fort Kochi was spent at Le Colonial, a 16th century bungalow that has witnessed much of Kochi’s recorded history. It was established as the governor’s residence when the then small fishing village was gifted by Raja of Kochi to the Portuguese. It continued to serve the same purpose more than a century later, even after the area came under Dutch control . Fort Kochi changed hands again and came under British rule another one-and-a-half centuries later, in the last decade of 18th century, and remained in their hands until the day of independence.
Now a boutique hotel since it last changed hands into Neemrana, Le Colonial has just seven rooms carefully decorated to reflect the days of it’s past. The rooms aren’t numbered, but named after personalities associated with the building. My room was named after Mahe de la Bourdonnais, who happened to spend a night here on his way from Pondicherry to Mahe.
It may be obvious to you by now that I spend a lot of time travelling. Naturally, this means spending several nights in hotels across the country. This also creates an opportunity to review those hotels and spread the word about good and bad things about the places I have stayed in. But so far, I have refrained.
I can’t think of a reason why I wasn’t doing hotel reviews so far. Perhaps I thought reviews are better left to TripAdvisor. Perhaps I thought it was something too commercial or may be I simply assumed this is not a place for hotel reviews.
But I started thinking otherwise a few months ago, when I began searching TripAdvisor to get information about hotels in some destinations. The reviews were often very contrasting and sometimes misleading. While some reviewers said that a hotel is the best choice, there were an equal number of people who said exactly the opposite. In some cases, it appeared likely that the reviews were rigged. And in some cases, unusually harsh reviews made me wonder if competitors were trying to defame the property. It wasn’t easy to qualify a hotel through the ratings and reviews on TripAdvisor or similar sources.
This, added with the fact that I spend many days staying at hotels, made me think it is probably worthwhile posting hotel reviews here. While I may never reach the volumes and coverage of a crowd sourced review system, at least I may be able to provide more accurate and trusted reviews of a few hotels in a few destinations.
Keeping this in mind, I will be starting hotel reviews on this site in near future. However, to prevent flooding this blog’s main page with reviews, I would be posting them as wordpress pages instead of blog posts. Only a monthly summary would be posted here as a blog post.
Your comments, if any on this, is welcome.