One would hope that the KTDC would act as a beacon for best practice and set the standard for hospitality in Kerala but, based on my experience of the KTDC Easy Hotel in Nilambur, this is far from the reality.
The hotel is a little way out of Nilambur, on the road from Gudalur. It is in a forested stretch of road.
On arrival, reception was unstaffed and no-one turned up to handle my arrival for ten minutes. The presentation of a booking form from Hotels.com created absolute confusion; several efforts were made to make me pay again, and it took a while to get shown to my room.
The hotel complex is only a couple of years old but has bceome rapidly shabby. the ceiling panels in my room were badly cracked, as were the walls, which were badly stained with mould and damp. There were originally two ceiling fans but now only one remained, leaving the stump of the other protruding from the ceiling. Inexplicably the fan blades, covered in dust, were still in the room under a desk.
There was no drinking water in the room on arrival, the hot water didn't work, although the air con and TV did.
The restaurant is a soulless place offering a limited range of food. Sadly they don't seem to place any emphasis on use of renewables such as promoting filtered rather than bottled water.
In the morning the staff piled the rubbish in the ground below my window and burnt it, including all the plastic bottles and bags. What wouldn't burn was thrown over the fence in to the forest.
I have two more KTDC properties to stay at and it will be interesting to see if Nilambur is the exception or the norm. I hope that it is the former but I suspect the latter.