Room service is very poor bed sheets and pillow covers are not properly clean and Food was worst most horrible hotel in whole tour only location is good swingpool is good but kitchen mangment is very bad we can choose another hotel on same locatio

Stayed at the beach hotel for 10 days. Location of Hotel is very nice, in front of Kovalam beach. View from my hotel room is awesome. Whole night we have enjoyed the sea water noices from my room. Room service and hospitality of hotel is not much good. Overall, location wise this hotel is awesome and very relaxing. The sea is about 10m from the hotel. You can sit on your balcony and watch the world go by and watch spectacular sunsets.

My partner and I stayed at the Neelakanta for three weeks in January 2011. We had not pre-booked this hotel, just walked in on the off-chance. We were shown a room on the second floor and jumped at it. It was massive. A huge bed, a lounge area and a dressing area, along with a large en-suite, complete with bath and shower area and a regular supply of Ayurvedic soap. Furnishings and the bathroom were your average Indian standard for a hotel of this class. The room also had a/c and a fridge, but no safe. What really made it was the wall of glass, with sliding doors out onto a large balcony with uninterrupted views over the beach, of the famous lighthouse and out to sea. It was great to sit out there any time of the day or night. A good vantage point to watch the fishermen hauling in the catch each morning and to view the stunning sunsets. Going to bed listening to the sea and waking to the same sound was a joy (although coming from a quiet village back home, and being a light sleeper, the sea kept me awake for the first couple of nights!). The room boys were very friendly. The girls obviously spoke no, or limited, English so just smiled and said "Good morning". The room was serviced every day, with linen and towel change (some soft - some hard, pot luck really), along with the ritual of moving the waste bin. (We did not want the bin next to the bed, so moved it into the lounge area next to the television table. The next day it would be back to the other side of the room by the bed. This happened every day for three weeks, staff and guests equally determined!!). The hotel had recently completed a small "infinity" pool and sun deck on the roof of the restaurant, with just a handful of good sunloungers. The pool and sunbeds were underused, understandable with the beach just outside the door, except from Friday to Sunday, when the hotel had an influx of Indian "weekenders". I generally had the pool to myself when I went to swim my lengths of a morning or late in the afternoon. Overall we thought our room at Neelakanta was good value, but then we did haggle on arrival and struck a good deal. The strangest of things on settlling the bill at the end of our stay. We had asked on arrival if they accepted cards, to which we were told "Yes, not a problem". However, they actually cannot handle cards at the hotel. Instead, we were escorted with card and passport to one of the moneychangers (not too concerned, as he was one of the guys we had dealings with during our stay). There I had to withdraw the amount of cash against my card and hand it over to my escort, who I then escorted back to the hotel to ensure the cash arrived safely and to get a hotel receipt. We would stay at Neelakanta again and recommend it to others. Obviously not up to "Leela" standards, but nontheless a good hotel, reasonably priced an in a great location on Lighthouse beach. A word of warning regarding room location. You need to have one on either the second or third floor. The rooms on the ground floor are totally obscured by the back of the restaurant building and those on the first floor are at just below the level of the swimming pool, so not only have an obscured view but also lack privacy.

I had been to Kerala on my honeymoon and stayed in this hotel. This hotel management/staff just ruined up my whole Kerala trip. We had booking for a deluxe sea view room. When we reached the hotel, they provided me a room which was facing their restaurant. It had a limited view of the sea from the side of its balcony, most of which was obstructed by the (pine) trees in the hotel compound. On arguing a lot with the manager, I was shifted to a sea view room but only at the end of first day.

The rooms were clean but the balcony was very dirty. No one could sit on the lawn chair which had been put there. Hotel staff was very badly managed, the servant were trained to switch off AC whenever one leave the room (probably they had a switch from outside). I had to call up room service to get my AC switched on every time I git into the room. No power backups for AC. No dedicated parking for the hotel, have a common parking spave for all hotels. I had to pull my trolley bag from parking lot to hotel, though the hotel staff provided person to port my luggage back to car from hotel on checkout.

No tinted windows in bathrooms, only plain transparent glasses which again I felt was disturbing my privacy. No lift. No room service for food. Restricted timings for hotel restaurant. Food was good but was costly. This hotel is away from Trivandrum (around 12 kms) on Kovalam main beach or popularly known as Lighthouse beach. Lighthouse is just a few minutes walk from the hotel.

Some of the qualities which I liked about the hotel were: TV in all room, spacious rooms and balcony, open air restaurant, good food. Beach is just in front of the hotel, just few steps away from the hotel's restaurant.