ITC Grand Chola — stunning property, let down by reservation chaos
Stayed one night in Chennai with a colleague, two rooms booked under my name, both fully paid by our company in advance. Location was a big plus — just 17 minutes from the airport for our late arrival. The property itself is grand and genuinely impressive.
That's where the good part ends.
At check-in, I was asked for a 20k INR holding deposit — no issue with that. But my colleague, checked in at a separate desk, was told she needed to *pay for the room itself*, and that breakfast wasn't included. Both wrong. We had to go back and get the front desk to confirm what should have been clear from the start. Not the welcome you want after a long day of travel.
The room delivered on the "grand" promise — beautiful furnishings, a nice pillow menu, genuinely good pillows. Let down slightly by a bathroom that, for all its polish, still had the previous guest's fingerprints on the mirror.
Checkout is where it really unravelled. Despite showing both the confirmation email and a printed copy proving the rooms were paid in full, I was told the balance could just be "deducted from the holding deposit." Only when we escalated to the reservation manager did the real issue surface: ITC had never received payment from Trip.com, and no one had thought to check with the OTA despite our booking being fully processed. This cost us over 30 minutes on a tight schedule.
Reservation manager Sumit stepped in properly — chased Trip.com, confirmed a refund for anything not owed, and followed up personally through the day. My deposit was released the next morning; my colleague's refund is in progress but will take 7–10 working days to land.
None of this needed to happen. A basic payment check between Trip.com and the hotel would have spared us the entire ordeal.
Breakfast: unremarkable, nothing to flag either way. Operational staff, on the other hand, were excellent throughout — this one's squarely on the reservations process, not the people on the ground.
I'd stay again — but only if ITC tightens up how it handles third-party bookings. The hotel earns its reputation; the admin side is currently spending it.
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