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RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

ajeygore.in

11–20 of 32 posts

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#13
Great work at organizing an amazing event @IndianGuru. I still cant believe that a renowned hotel like 'the Lalit' can take a risk to upset an online community. They probably have no idea of the power of ruby/internet community. Let's submit shit loads of reviews on tripadvisor and other places that teaches them a good lesson.

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#14
post #2

There should be easier procedure to file cases at consumer courts. To prevent such things from happening again.

Or maybe http://www.core.nic.in/

They are dysfunctional & your complaint would go down a blackhole. Never to be seen or heard again.

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#15
post #2

There should be easier procedure to file cases at consumer courts. To prevent such things from happening again.

Maybe we should file a complaint here - www.akosha.com/onlinecomplaints1.html

They won't be of any real help. It's better to get to popular blogs in India like nextbigwhat, trak.in, etc. A coverage on TOI will get you a lot of mileage.

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#16
Do this:

1) Approach a good lawyer to send a legal letter to the hotel putting in all the problems and demand a huge compensation.

2) File a case in the consumer court of Goa, if no proper response from the hotel.

3) If the lawyer finds no issues then approach local and national news/press agencies and get your story published there. Anything that comes in the news papers has a far greater impact and makes such businesses get down on their knees.

4) Do not delay in filing the case. Do it ASAP.

I wish you get a decent compensation though Indian courts are not known for that.

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#17
I was one of the speakers at this event and I have to say that the organizers really made a heroic effort to ensure we had a good event. Anyone not talking to the organizers did not even realize the stress they were under...they did an amazing job covering up the failures of the hotel. I am friends with many of the organizers, and the looks of pain on their faces when these problems came up really hit me hard. I applaud the organizers for taking such good care of us speakers (even to the point of going through our hotel bills individually) and the attendees (going to bat to ensure they were unaware of the problems).

I had an amazing time...thank you for your hard work.

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#18
post #3

I've run events like this for over 10 years now, a couple pointers; * Negotiate payment terms that require a deposit, but for which the balance is paid after the event. * Always have a meeting with hotel management pre-event, review the contract, make sure everything is correct. * Double Check your BEO's as part of the setup process - again, verify to contract. * In the event of a dispute, have a copy of your counter…

@Aloha + The minimum room requirement amount (as per contract) was paid a week in advance to the hotel already. So, we held good on the contract terms - this was 28.4 Lakh INR!

+ The actuals, incidentals and additional costs (which were about 8.45L) would have been done via RTGS settlement after the event. However, Hotel refused to let us even check-out! After paying 28.4L, to be threatened for the balance is ridiculous!

+ The Hotel double-booked events - they admitted it was their fault as asked us for our help. Once we had extended our help to save them from a huge liability, they simply shunned us away - we should have been duly compensated for this mess (not to mention the inconvenience at the conference - blasting drums, lunch in the hot sun etc.) But they refused to even MEET us the next day, the moment we helped them avert the disaster!

#Fail #Fail #Fail - we were treated as mis-creatants instead of guests!

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#19

Do this: 1) Approach a good lawyer to send a legal letter to the hotel putting in all the problems and demand a huge compensation. 2) File a case in the consumer court of Goa, if no proper response from the hotel. 3) If the lawyer finds no issues then approach local and national news/press agencies and get your story published there. Anything that comes in the news papers has a far greater impact and makes such busin…

4th point is most important, as it's been 2 days gone since conference. Need to hurry!

Re: RubyConf India – Hospitality was anything but pleasant at The Lalit Goa

#20
For future reference: would there be benefit in hiring a reputed event management company, if so what would be the overhead?

Reasoning is three fold. The event management companies: (i) know which places work, (ii) they give repeat business, so less likely to be brushed off, and (iii) their boss (even if not onsite) has been in such situations before & knows what to do.

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