Taj Hotels has one of the slowest customer services. Their online presence is almost negligible. They don’t have call centers and you are required to find their information manually. I am seeing that they are slowly using Twitter for Taj Inner Circle – their loyalty program.
It took them 1 year 2 months to add my miles to my account. That’s flabbergasting. They recently changed their loyalty program to allow upto 5 rooms to get hotel credit.
My stays with Taj have been overall pleasurable. You can see the cost-cutting but it’s not the end of the world. Their hospitality at the hotels is top notch. However, I have only stayed in their top luxury palace properties only in recent past.
However, when it comes to dealing with their corporates, my experience feels like I am dealing with Indian Government. Everything takes the longest period of time. I would get a reply to my mail once in 10 days. Even the response wouldn’t be an affirmation of the service but rather annoying – we are processing your request, please be patient type. That went on for about 50 emails before they solved my concern which was to post points to my account.
Now, another strange thing about Taj Hotels loyalty program is that they don’t provide you air miles based on your spends but rather a fixed based price. So if you spent some money at the hotel, Good luck with that. It doesn’t matter how expensive is your room rate. That’s making of one of the worst conversion ever.
Kindly check the below Airlines structure for miles as per the Taj property wise.
| Sr No | Airlines | Program Name | Luxury | Vivanta | Gateway | Length Of No |
| 1 | ANA Airlines | ANA Mileage Club | 500 | 500 | 500 | 10 |
| 2 | American Airlines | A Advantage | 500 | 250 | 250 | 7 (Alpha Numeric) |
| 3 | British Airways | Avios | 600 | 300 | 250 | 8 |
| 4 | Cathay Pacific | Asia Miles | 500 | 250 | 250 | 10 |
| 5 | Emirates Airlines | Skywards | 500 | 500 | 500 | 11 (Starts with EK / 00) |
| 6 | Etihad Airlines | Etihad Guest | 500 | 250 | 250 | 12 |
| 7 | Gulf Airways | Falcon Flyer | 500 | 250 | 250 | 11 |
| 8 | KLM/Air France | Flying Blue | 750 | 500 | 500 | 10 |
| 9 | Lufthansa | Miles & More | 500 | 500 | 500 | 15 |
| 10 | Oman | Sindbad | 500 | 250 | 250 | 9 |
| 11 | Malaysian Airlines | Enrich | 500 | 250 | 250 | 9 |
| 12 | Qatar Airways | Privilege Club | 500 | 250 | 250 | 9 |
| 13 | Singapore Airlines | Kris Flyer | 500 | 250 | 250 | 10 |
| 14 | Sri Lankan Airlines | Fly Smiles | 500 | 250 | 250 | 12 |
| 15 | Virgin Atlantic | Flying Club | 500 | 500 | 500 | 10 |
| 16 | United | Mielage Plus | 1000 | 500 | 500 | 8 (Alpha Numeric) |
| 17 | South African Airways | South African Airways | 750 | 500 | 500 |
The last part is the length of expected frequent flyer number. Getting 500 EK points for Rs 20,000 to Rs 70,000 room is terrible value.
1 Ek Mile = Rs 1.46
500 Ek Miles = Rs 730.
Best value is for United Miles that gets you 1000 UMiles
1 United Mile = Rs 0.97
1000 United Miles = Rs 970
Again, that is nothing for Rs 20k to 70k room spend. Moreover, if you get higher category room there, you still don’t earn more miles. You only get base room fare.
Now I am questioning, why are they even offering those miles in the first place? I don’t understand tie up structure at all. One of the worst features is that Tata doesn’t have interoperability with Vistara for miles. Both of the companies have same parent company Tata Group, why would you not provide benefits to make your brand stronger?
I am still trying to understand if you get miles for multiple rooms at Taj or is it just one for that.
