Serena Khaplu Palace

Everything. Location, staff and amazing food

We liked everything from hospitality to service. The room we had was spacious and very aesthetically designed. The location itself is spellbinding. Overall my experience was very nice. Yes the food and breakfast were good as well.

People usually travel with drivers when travelling with family to these areas. The facility didn't have any dedicated place for drivers and we had to check for a place for him to stay the night. Though we found a reasonable hotel nearby but when you are talking about Serena, expectations are world class. This is one place where Serena management should work on.

Aesthetically superb with much historic significance and interest. Beautiful gardens and grounds. Lovingly decorated- really really pretty with attention to details like lights in the wooden cupboards and sweet little blinds on windows. The highlight was the free airport shuttle to the property. It was a long but incredibly beautiful and comfortable drive with the excellent chauffeur Ghulam Abbas who was so courteous, obliging and knowledgeable about the area. He made this the best part of our entire stay. The staff was good about not charging us extra for the mattress which we ended up not using. Laundry (ironing was done well and quickly). Clean and very comfortable beds, bedlinen and pillows. Bathroom very well provided with all essentials and lots of towels - loved the quality of toiletries: Penhaligon’s!!

The food. Needing to go into the garden in order to get phone signals while being limited to WiFi inside hotel. Having to request everything: kettle with tea/coffee, bathroom slippers. No iron provided and no fridge/ minibar. No room service. Cleanliness: had to request for our bathroom to be cleaned when we arrived- smell went but floor remained stained; dusting and floor-cleaning were also not done as thoroughly as you’d expect- okay for a 3-star but not a heritage luxury hotel. Airport shuttle only guaranteed for pick up but for drop, they will only take you to airport if it is going there to pick up another guest anyway and only at that time, so we had to leave at 5am in order to catch it. Otherwise, the transporter charges Rs.12,000 for the trip. He also tried to hugely overcharge us by adding Rs.32,000 on top of this for a trip to just Deosai from Skardu. We got a perfect AC 4x4 from Skardu which cost us just Rs.25,000 and included an extra trip to the Cold Desert for paragliding as well.

The palace is beautiful. Extremely serene and peaceful. Surrounded by the most breathtaking mountains, it's an ideal place to disconnect, relax and unwind. The restoration has been done flawlessly, maintaining the integrity and authenticity of the site. The experience of staying in a fort, surrounded with so much history, is truly unique and incomparable. Our room was spotless, equipped with a comfortable bed and really good WiFi.

The "Serena" experience was just not there. The staff desperately required training. They were slow, unresponsive and unhelpful. At check-in we were taken to a different (worse) room than the one we had booked because of '"unavailability". Upon insistance, they magically found our original booking and moved us to the correct room. The receptionist was really unhelpful and provided us with no information. Housekeeping & room service were very slow. After requesting for something, we had to wait 30-40 minutes for it to get sent to our room, and some of the items were still missing. One of the waiters at the restaurant was very good but the rest of the staff was very standoffish and inattentive. We had also booked an open balcony for breakfast which was provided to another family because they "could not find our booking". A complete mismanagement. Customer service and staff training needs a serious upgrade. For the price tag, it was also disappointing to see that the rooms lacked an AC, TV, kettle and other basic amenities. The food was just ok. The breakfast was extremely disappointing with very very limited options. Overall, I'd say it'd be better to visit the palace, spend some time there, maybe have some tea or a light lunch and then head back to Skardu/Shigar.