Makemytrip.com - Review

With the travel posts done, now comes the "much-awaited" review of makemytrip.com. :-p

I will first give a description of our interaction with the company and then provide the pros and cons.

When hubby and I decided to go to Singapore - Malaysia for our vacation, we checked out a few different tour operators and then based on cost-benefit analysis, finalized on makemytrip.com. During our research on various operators, we had already decided on which tour suited us best - based on no. of places, cost, no. of days and the pre-decided dates of the tours.

The first thing before finally deciding to go with makemytrip was to check the websites of the hotels which they were providing and decide whether we were fine with them. We did not much like the look of Cherry Loft Apartments which they were providing for Singapore, but decided to go ahead since any place in Singapore couldn't be that bad. Tip: Always check out the websites of the hotels being provided before deciding to book.

Once we had finalized on the trip to take, we called up the number provided for customer care rather than booking online (which provided INR500 discount per person) since we had a lot of questions which needed to be answered before we finalized the trip. The customer care number "eventually" directed us to a "Travel Specialist" (TS). It would take a long stretch of imagination to think of the TS as a 'specialist' as he knew very little about the travel aspect of the trip. We asked him our queries, of which he could only answer a few and said that he would get back to us on the rest after confirming.

The good thing about getting in touch with the TS was that he made us aware of a much bigger discount that we could get by booking through a specific credit card (which we happened to have!) - INR3,500. So we were happy with the discount and his answers and decided to go ahead and book the tour. Tip: Instead of taking the online discount, please first talk to a TS and see whether you can get a bigger discount.

The TS gave us a list of documents which were required for the visas and on our insistence, agreed to send a man over to our home to pick up our passports and documents. Before this was done, we had to pay a token amount so that the ball could start rolling (~20% of the total cost).

The delays started once the documents had been picked up. We had to chase the TS for the visas and tickets and these were delivered to us just 3 days before we were to travel (on full payment of the tour cost of course). This led to a bit of hassle and we did end up shouting at the TS and other customer care people before we got the docs! Tip: start checking with the TS within days of submitting your docs on when you will receive the tickets, visas and other docs.

But finally we had the docs, the visas and our tickets, and they mailed our itinerary, and we were ready to travel! :) This smile was wiped out at the check-in counter of the airlines where we were informed that our seats had already been chosen by makemytrip and surprise, surprise - hubby and I were NOT seated together. When we got into the plane, we could not get 2 seats together and this of course led to a bad start to the journey :( Tip: Tell the TS not to choose your seats in advance. Better to select them at the airport yourself.

Anyways, we reached Malaysia, and were pleasantly surprised by the hotel, which was really good and we got a suite .. yay! Both the hotels in Malaysia were quite good and so was the guide (though we did find him a bit rude - but in hind sight we realize that people in Malaysia and Singapore tend to be rude in general).  

It was on to Singapore, and as we had said, we did not like the look of Cherry Loft Apartments much on the website and in reality, it was quite ok. The rooms were clean, but we had trouble with hot water which the reception was unable to handle and we had to make do with cold water. Also, there was no one to take our bags to our rooms (we had rooms on the top floor and the elevator did not go up to the top floor!).

Also, the wonderful TS at makemytrip had not mailed the boarding pass (or it was called something similar) for the cruise and we were informed on the day we were supposed to board the cruise, that we need a boarding pass. Half of us did not have the boarding pass, and hence we called up the person who was managing the tour in Singapore. He assured us that he would have them ready when we returned to Cherry Loft in the evening and thankfully he did! Fortunately, the rest of the trip was fine except that we of course did not have seats together on the return flight (I want to whack the TS for this - how could he be so stupid to do this twice????).

So here come the pros and cons of makemytrip.com. I would suggest you research well on the hotels, itineraries and documents needed before you travel with them.

Pros:

• Relatively cheaper when compared to other tour operators. The relative cheapness comes from the fact that they do not provide most of the meals, their hotels are the cheaper ones and many of the more expensive sight seeing options (Night Safari, Singapore Flyer, Universal Studios, etc.) which other tour operators include in the cost are given as "optional" by makemytrip. This means that you should ideally add this to your tour cost before you do cost comparison with other operators.
• They provide more free time compared to other operators (due to the optional sight seeing). This is fine for people like hubby and me who prefer to explore on their own, but not for others who unfamiliar with how to travel on their own.

Cons:

• Some of the hotels they provide are not that great.
• Since they do not provide all meals, can be a problem for vegetarian people (and adds to the tour cost).
• Their management of the tour is below average (as you have read above).

 

Will I travel again with them? ---- I might, but I will surely research more and will only go on a particular tour if I am fine with all the hotels they are offering (in a package, they refuse to change a particular hotel even if you are ready to pay more).

If you have read the whole of this very verbose post, congratulations!

And do let me know if you have any questions! :)

So have you traveled with makemytrip? How was your experience?