Gourmet Passport is a membership program by Dineout which provides access to complimentary food, drinks and buffets at 2000+ partner restaurants similar to Zomato Gold and Easydiner Prime. The best part about Gourmet Passport is complimentary buffet is also available at some of the high end 5 star restaurants like Taj, Marriot, Sheraton etc.
I have been enjoying the benefits of Gourmet Passport program for close to 10 Months as part of complimentary Times Prime membership from ET Money App. In this article, I am documenting my real world experience with Gourmet Passport & Dineout App.
Features
The Gourmet Passport is a membership program that offers complimentary dishes, drinks & buffets at 2000+ restaurants across top cities in the country. This includes all major popular restaurants, including over 150 5-star hotels. As part of program, members receive 3 coupons per restaurant might consist of any of the following offers depending on the restaurant:
- Complimentary dishes
- Complimentary drinks
- Complimentary buffet
You can view the offer available beforehand in Dineout App or website. Currently the membership is available in Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, Jaipur and Chandigarh. The membership comes in form of different packs and each pack is priced according to it’s benefits. Generally a pack starts from Rs. 499 and goes till Rs. 2,499.
How it works?
- When you request your bill, you must notify the person attending to you that you want to redeem a Gourmet Passport app offer using your smartphone.
- Search for the restaurant within the app and, while the teller is watching, tap redeem and enter the number of coupons you want to redeem (be sure that the outlet is correct because some restaurants have offers that can be redeemed at more than one outlet).
- The app will ask for the restaurant’s PIN. Simply ask the teller to enter their restaurant PIN number to acknowledge that they are accepting the offer.
- When they have done this you will get a confirmation notice on your screen.
- The teller will most likely want to make a note of the transaction ID that appears on your screen so you should allow them to do this.
- The teller will then prepare your bill with the discount applied.
Experience
I booked a table for two at Sheraton Grand Whitefield, Bangalore for buffet dinner using Dineout App. The restaurant confirmed the booking promptly within an hour. I reached restaurant on time and showed my booking id to the attender. The attender informed me that my table was ready and he guided us to our table. At the table, I enquired if I can use Gourmet Passport and the attender confirmed in affirmative.
At the end of our stupendous buffet dinner, before generation of bill, I told waiter that I want to use Gourmet Passport. Waiter asked me to redeem the coupon and share the transaction id with him. When I tried to redeem the coupon in Dineout App, it asked for the restaurant PIN which waiter entered on my mobile. Once the PIN was entered, I was presented with a confirmation screen showing successful redemption of coupon. The waiter took the photo of confirmation screen with his mobile for the record. As promised, the final bill contained amount only for one buffet and no extra charges. I wanted to pay by Dineout Pay to get extra discount of 5% and utilize by Dineout pay wallet balance. However it was not accepted there and hence I paid via my credit card.
Overall it was a smooth and hassle free experience and I really liked the way it worked.
Drawbacks
Though this program provides excellent value, there are certain drawbacks too. First and foremost being availability is limited cities. Dineout should work aggressively on making this available in other Indian cities too. Also the number of tie-up restaurants is little less when compared to other programs. Though they have some really good restaurants in their kitty, they should try to expand this program to more and more restaurants.
Bottomline
50% discount on dinner buffet at a 5 star restaurant is a dream come true and is the best value provided by this program. Though, I have all three memberships (Gourmet Passport, Zomato Gold and Easydiner Prime), most of the time, I end up using Gourmet Passport. This is mainly because Gourmet Passport has better tie-up restaurants than other two.
I also wish that Credit Card companies should move to Gourmet Passport rather than maintaining their own fine dining programs (e.g. Good Food Trail from HDFC, Dining Delights from Axis Bank, Culinary Treats from ICICI Bank etc.). This program gives better value than their individual programs and is far more convenient.
I would highly recommend enrolling in to this membership program if you’re a foodie and are in to fine dining.
PS: Use my referral code NNUVS to sign up on Dineout and you’ll get Rs. 200 promo cash. You will also get 20% discount on Gourmet Passport program which is not available otherwise.
