Should You Stay at Flute Boutique Hotel Jaipur, India? – Review

As is the case with a lot of hotels with the word “boutique” in them, I found that I couldn’t quite figure out what was so “boutique” about the Flute Boutique Hotel Jaipur.

It is a quaint little hotel and I liked a few things about it,  but does “quaint” mean “boutique”? I think a lot of people believe they can throw a few quirky photos on a wall, hire a doorman and bellhop, and call the hotel a “boutique” hotel.

After having stayed here, I wouldn’t call the Flute Boutique Hotel a boutique hotel. It’s just a hotel in Jaipur that’s trying maybe just a little too hard.

Flute Hotel Location

One of the best things about this hotel is its location in Jaipur city. From it, I was able to walk to nearly all of the tourist places in Jaipur in under an hour – the City Palace, the Hawa Mahal, and other Jaipur attractions.

If Jaipur sightseeing on foot is part of your plan, then this is a good central location for you.

The most famous places to see in Jaipur are all relatively close. And sometimes it’s easier to walk than it is to take a taxi that could get stuck in traffic!

If your goal is to stay at one of the hotels near Jaipur airport, this is not the best place.

Although it’s only a 20 minute drive away and Über is always available for cheap.

Room Quirks

While the room is nice enough for the price – it was only about $35 a night – I had to get the bellman to come up a couple of times to explain things. There are so many light switches that it was hard to figure them out.

On my first night, I couldn’t get the light above the bed to turn off. After  30 minutes, I got frustrated and had someone come up.

The solution was simple, but strange. Behind the pillows at the head of the bed was a panel of switches that controlled the whole room.

It was odd to have these right at your head. If you accidentally brushed up against one of them at night, you’d end up turning everything on in your room.

I’d never seen anything like that before.

To keep the AC and electricity running, you need to keep your room key plugged into a slot. While I understand the reasoning for this in cheap hostels, I never understand it at hotels.

It’s just not customer friendly when you cannot charge things while you’re away. One of the best things about this room is that you can use just about any kind of card in the slot.

I used my Priority Pass!

The problem with not leaving a card in the slot when you leave the room is that neither the “Do Not Disturb” nor the “Please Clean Up” light functions, so it’s kinda useless to have them.

Additionally, there is nowhere to sit in the room – no chair, no desk. If you want to work on your laptop, I guess you have to do it in bed.

Hotel Decor

The decor of the Flute Boutique Hotel Jaipur is, uhmmm, strange. All over the hotel, you’ll find pictures of women – some famous, some not so famous. In black and white.

All with candy apple red lipstick. And that’s it.

That’s the “art” part of the hotel.

And it all looked like the pictures were purchased from the surplus stock art at Walmart, passed off to a child with a red marker, put in cheap frames, and put on the walls of the hotel.

Maybe this is the boutique-y part of the hotel and I’m just not cultured enough to recognize such things.

Let’s make every woman in these pictures look like a Rolling Stones groupie.

Shower and Bathroom

This was my least favorite part of the Flute Boutique Hotel. The bathroom looks nice, don’t you think? Well yeah, until you discover that it’s a very tight squeeze to get in and out.

The door on the shower goes nearly all the way to the floor, so if there is a bath mat outside the shower, it gets swept away as you enter and exit.

And speaking of the shower. While it looks really nice with two shower heads – one directly above and one in front of you – the shower did not drain properly.

If you spend any more than three minutes in the shower (after the 2 minutes it takes to heat the water up), it will overflow into the bathroom.

Since it takes quite some time to drain, three minutes is pretty much the end of your shower time.

Four minutes if you are lucky.

There was also very little toilet paper on the roll. But I brought my own, as I usually do. There is no substitute for Charmin’ Ultra.

If you’re from the U.S. and are familiar with this brand, then you know. It is one of the main reasons I have not moved back to Canada.

Cleanliness

The rooms to me seemed to be fairly clean, although there is very little attention to detail. The door jambs had stains on them from water. There was dust on the coffee station.

The bathroom could have been cleaned better than it was.

Nothing was a deal breaker, but if you’re used to western style hotels where they go through your room thoroughly, then you’ll really notice a difference here.

Still, the most important things seemed to be very clean. Bed, pillow cases, towels, etc. I would have no problem staying here again based on cleanliness.

I thought it was fine.

But then, I am used to staying in much lower quality accommodations around the world and I am used to not being too picky!

Noise

One of my biggest issues with this Jaipur hotel was the noise. The walls here are paper thin. If anyone is talking outside your door, you’re going to hear it and you’ll hear it clearly.

I experienced this when there was a group of people talking next to the elevator down the hall at 11 PM. It was quite annoying. Enough so that I asked the desk clerk to put a stop to it.

He was nice and came up and promptly told the people to go to their rooms and talk.

That solved the problem.

Flute Boutique Hotel Jaipur Staff

The staff here are very friendly and helpful, even though they seemed to have a tough time with English. You won’t find me to be a very Anglo-centric person, but the hotels in Jaipur generally cater to tourists.

It seems to me that they could be more fluent than they are, given that many of the guests are from Anglophone countries (and English is commonly spoken in the larger areas of India).

And, you know, they are a “boutique hotel in Jaipur.”

But maybe my expectations are high and perhaps I’m over-expanding the definition of “boutique” again.

Does anyone know what it means?

In all seriousness though, I didn’t have too much trouble with the staff in this regard. It was just on some of the finer points. For example, for two days, I ordered breakfast and coffee and charged it to my room.

The night before I left, I wanted to pay for those breakfasts so I could leave at 5 the next morning without disturbing anyone.

When I explained this to them, they seemed to understand it as though I was ordering breakfast for the next morning at 5. It took a while to get the point across, though I finally did.

Amenities

Internet

The Wi-Fi at the Flute Boutique Hotel Jaipur had adequate speed when I could access it. Sometimes it’s strong in the room; other times, it wasn’t. The password changes daily, perhaps even while you’re in mid-session.

Although I am not certain of this, there seems to be a one-device session limit. I didn’t ask, but it seemed to kick me off my phone when I connected my laptop. That’s quite annoying, as you can imagine.

I gave up after awhile and just turned on my iPhone hotspot.

Restaurant

The restaurant doesn’t have what I would call a great menu, and I think it’s all vegetarian (which I love!) It could really use a more robust breakfast selection.

That said both mornings I was here, I ordered the Indian breakfast. It consisted of two curry-type of pancakes made with flour, corn, and spices, along with a bowl of dosa.

It was delicious and cheap. I really liked it a lot. It’s not a big meal, but I am not a big breakfast eater. But it’s so cheap you can order two!

When you order a coffee, be specific about what you want. If you just order a coffee, it will come with milk in it and sugar on the side.

It’s more like a latte than a regular coffee. I actually liked it quite a bit. If you want it any other way than with milk, ask.

Note: You can’t bring outside food or drink into the hotel. They say it’s for sanitary reasons. I think it’s more for “buy your food from the Flute hotel” reasons.

Having said that, I brought food back to my room a couple of times before I noticed the sign and never had a problem.

It probably depends on who is on duty at the time.

Taxi Chick-Inn

The Taxi Chick-Inn is a little restaurant about a 3-minute walk up the street. Of course it’s not an amenity at the hotel itself, but it is well worth mentioning.

It’s almost like a street food stall, but with seating inside.

Chick-Inn has a ton of great vegetarian options. The food is delicious, in my opinion, and inexpensive.

My goal was to eat street food here, but I liked this place so much I ate about 4 meals here. For 250 rupees (less than $5), you can get a good meal.

If you want a soft drink, add 50 rupees. Water is cheap, and lassi is also available.

Most meals come with coleslaw (which is typical coleslaw) and a scoop of onion salad that is really great!

It turned out that this was a big plus while staying at the Flute Boutique Hotel Jaipur. Everything is cooked outside on both a regular grill and a wood-fired grill.

The spicy tikka masala here is the best I’ve ever had. If you like Indian food, you’ll enjoy this place. They serve veg and non-veg options and it is cheap.

You can watch them cook everything, too!

Highly recommended and the staff is super!

At a Glance

While it’s probably not one of the top hotels in Jaipur, India, it’s still a pretty good place to stay, even with its quirks and issues.

If you’re looking for a hotel in Jaipur, I’d have no issues recommending this place.

Address:
D-81, Shiv Hira Path, Chomu House, C Scheme, Jaipur, Rajasthan 302001, India
Phone:
+91 141 236 9966

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For more of our reviews of various accommodations around the world, check out our Accommodations page.

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