Guys Consider this scenario.

You are a first time visitor to India and choose Delhi as your entry point. You have already booked your first stay in a Hostel in Delhi called Smyle Inn. This hostel in Delhi has already confirmed your booking via email and advised you to book airport pickup from them. The adventurer in you, decides to make it to Smyle Inn hostel in Delhi on your own.

Arriving at the Delhi airport after a long tiresome flight, you’re tired, and choose to pick a pre-paid taxi from the airport to commute to your hostel in Delhi. The driver, after driving for a sometime, tells you that he doesn’t know exactly where the hotel is and suggests that he checks with the Government Tourist Agency to enquire about the booking and the hostel directions. Too tired to wander off without directions, you agree to him, being oblivious to the fact the driver is pretending not to know directions, and the Government Tourist Agency he is talking about, is nothing but spurious agency run by touts.

Anyways after arriving at the unofficial agency, the (un)concerned person pretends to call your Hostel in Delhi, and the impostor, on the other end of the call, imitates to be someone directly associated with Smyle Inn. He then informs you that your booking has been cancelled, or something to that effect. Now that you’ve learnt that your booking has been cancelled by your Delhi hostel, you feel perturbed and dismayed. Your driver and the agency, well aware of this, take full advantage of the fact and manage to convince you to take you to another Budget Hotel in Delhi, which may OR may not be more expensive. After you reluctantly agree, you check-in to this new budget hotel in Delhi. The driver and the agency get commission money from the new so called Budget Hotel and they laugh their way to nearest pub.

Another innovative way is to create some kind of security hoax alert saying that the area is closed due to security issues or the area has been cordened off due to disturbance in that area OR something on similar lines.

The next day you get a NO-SHOW mail from your hostel in Delhi and after reading it you realise that there is nothing called a Government Tourist Agency and that the driver and the agency run by touts have actually scammed you. And then you realise that spending an extra appx US$10 would have saved you such a big trouble especially if you are coming at odd hours.

Well that is it folks, this blog post is authored by the management of Smyle Inn hostel in Delhi purely as an education series to travellers on how to avoid common tourist traps and scams in Delhi. Please check the website www.smyleinn.com and www.smyleinn.com/location.htm for crisp directions on how to reach Smyle Inn hostel in Delhi.