Also an interesting data point today. I paid went back to the same hotel which charged me in USD even though I requested INR. This time I got the same choice slip, but the lady was playing with the card machine as I was signing and choosing INR and then out popped a really long slip. Which showed that she had billed me in INR, she pointed at it and said she had charged me in INR.

So it seems there is a bit of fiddling to be done to get charged in local currency. I believe it was HDFC bank.

I'm heading to Sri Lanka, Maldives, Indonesia, Japan and Australia over next two months so I'll let you know how DCC is at those places. I doubt there will be much DCC at my Maldives hotel because they charge everything in dollars as their standard.