Hotel in zona Jagan Palace, Banquet, Bilaspur

Stayed here for overnight halt enroute chandigarh from manali in first week of February. Located just before bilaspur town. Good road side location. 1) staff and reception : polite helpfull. 2) rooms: we stayed in family room which had 2 double bed rooms and can accomodate 2 floor beds. Rooms were clean. But maintainence is lacking. Only the road facing part of hotel seems to be well maintained. 3) had only one heater for family room. In cold himachal weather it may get inadequate some times. 4) no views from room at all. Can't think of sitting in gallery and having a cup of tea. 5) Food was average at best. 6) we dealt with the hotel directly and got good rates. 7) hotel showed inability to get our car cleaned from outside , citing lack of manpower and water !!!. This gave a bad impression considering the location of hotel for tourist traveling in vehicles. Overall an average experience.

Very expensive for what it is. We paid INR 11,800 for the night, which was by far our highest spend per night on a hotel in India. Ironically, it was our least favourite hotel of our trip. Given that there are few hotels in the area, and the location can’t be beaten (you can walk to the temple, which is just around the corner) this would probably explain the overinflated price. However, I was surprised by all the 5 star reviews on tripadvisor, based on the facilities. The room is lacking in the usual amenities you would expect. Whilst there is a kettle, which is very welcome, there are no sachets of tea, coffee, milk or sugar. No mini bar either. Thankfully we’d packed a few sachets of tea and milk from our previous hotel. Things missing: hairdryer, iron, safe, hand towels (some stains on the shower towels and on the bedding) shower mat, fridge etc. There’s no duvet with cover, but rather a very, very thick fleece blanket that covers the bed. It seems like it would be quite difficult to wash after every guest. There is a tv (which we didn’t use), air conditioning (which worked fine) and WiFi (though it’s incredibly weak, and we struggled to use it with much success). There was little water coming out of the shower. A trickle, like rain water. Although the temperature was fine, the flow was not sufficient enough to be able to wash your hair. This is probably why a bucket and cup is provided in the shower, which we had to use in the end. The walls are also very thin, so you could hear everything your neighbour was doing in their own bathroom, which was not always very pleasant! 😅 Our taxi driver was due to stay at the hotel as well, but the lights weren’t working in his room and there was little water in his shower. He told us he used the showers at the gudwara over the road instead, and stayed in his car. The staff seemed very pleasant, although I was a little disappointed to learn that my prepayment for the room, 10 days prior to checking in, went unacknowledged due to the manager being “too busy to reply” to my email. I’d had some difficulty transferring the payment to their account, and the bank had asked a few extra questions before processing the payment, so it would have been nice to have not had to worry about it. In the end, our previous hotel called them for us, during our stay, to confirm that it had been received. I have to say that the manager does seem very pleasant, however I’m not sure he enjoys running his hotel.