gleff

Any news on this? Hopefully they at least now know that such awards are possible.

Starwood Lurker

They seem to have added Specialty and Specialty Select room types to the award availability; however, there is no award rate plan for suites.

Sincerely,


William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

[email protected]

stephem

We stayed for 3 nights in the beginning of Dec on our way through SE Asia. Things didn’t start well here, we had arranged for the hotel to pick us up in a 5 series BMW (at the airport in BKK) and they had our flight information and had confirmed several days before they would be there to pick us up. Well, nobody was holding a little sign for us, and this was not a good thing as we had just come in from Cambodia where my wife got very ill from street vendor food. She had been throwning up all morning,was in pain and really needed to lie down.

So after waiting about 15 minutes I approached a woman from the Bangkok SGS who was waiting to pick up guests and explained our situation, showing her our reservation. She saw that I was an SPG Plat and true to form about everything I have heard about the SGS she took complete care of us. She walked us to some chairs and told us to sit down, brought my wife some water, made sure she was going to be ok and then went to work finding out what went wrong. She found out pretty fast that the Sheraton Pattaya had screwed something up and then just went and found us a car. It took about two hours for this to get worked out (and we got a Honda Accord instead of the BMW) but thanks to the SGS we were on our way. She made one last check as we were getting in the car, saying to me, “if your wife is not well enough to travel I will check you into the SGS and we will get a doctor to see you right away.” At that point my wife was no longer in as much pain, so we said our thanks and headed out. But that is the kind of treatment I have come to know and love when staying with the majority of Starwood properties. I was starting to wonder if the Sheraton Pattaya was going to be one of the minority of properties that treated me otherwise.

The ride down to Pattaya was a breeze, just under 2 hours. Our ride in the newish Accord was fine, not as deluxe as the BMW would have been, but perfectly comfortable. There was no traffic at this time of day (left the airport at 12:30pm) and when the new airport opens the ride will be even easier given its location more to the SE of the city. The roads are good multi-lane highways most of the way to Pattaya and it is only the last 20 minutes that are on smaller roads. It's really a lot like driving around the US. which was a welcome relief after our time in Vietnam and Cambodia!

The Sheraton is in an area just south of the main Pattaya town area, on a hilly section of the coast. In my opinion it is nice that it is isolated like this as the rest of what I saw of Pattaya wasn’t what we would be looking for in a vacation getaway.

When we arrived we went to the check in desk and I was quite stunned how long it took before someone came over to apologize or even address the mess up with the airport pickup. The person checking me in didn’t know anything about it, finally someone came over to talk to me about it but she merely said something along the lines of “the night manager was supposed to set those things up and it looks like he didn’t get word of your arrival until 7am.” I looked at her and just said that we were upset that my wife had to sit in agony for almost 2 hours in the airport and that had it not been for the woman from the SGS we wouldn’t have even bothered to come to Pattaya. But still no reaction, I never received an apology, but only a stiffly worded, “well we will waive the charge for the car pickup.” I was fuming about this and politely let them know that this was not sufficient and the ball was in their court to make us feel less angry about the incident. Later in the day after going to our room we received a call from someone higher up (I forget the exact title) with the simple point "we mixed up your car reservation and on top of that we have failed to apoligize properly to you, please call the spa and arrange for two treatments on the us and me know if this still leaves you feeling upset." That was exactly the call I was hoping we would get (more on the spa later).

We headed to our Oceanfront Deluxe Pavilion room (there is an exterior picture of one of these on the hotel website). We didn’t get an SPG upgrade because we had booked the highest class room here. I had tried to get one of these room with points, but the hotel only gives out the lowest two classes of rooms with points. We really wanted the pavilion room, so we booked a cash rate of $189 per night which is not bad in absolute terms but is a fortune for this area of Thailand (and a lot considering a basic room is only 3k points). In retrospect we probably could have booked the lowest tier room with cash or points and been upgraded to a pavilion room (since occupancy was very lowduring our stay) but I didn’t want to risk that. Additionally, I am not at all sure we would have gotten a pavilion upgrade without a fight given how we’d been treated up until this point. I promised myself none of that calling customer service and fighting for an upgrade stuff on this trip.

So we got what we paid for and it was definitely a very nice room. It is spacious, with a separate walk in shower and large soaking tub. The bathroom is a tanish/redish sandstone that is polished up in a way that it actually looks like varnished maple wood. The bedroom floors are a teak-like wood. There is a seafoam green faux finish on the bathroom walls and matching mosaic tile in the bathroom. The outside pavillion has a large seating area with teak benches and comfortable cushions. If you click on "Guest Rooms & Amenities" link at the hotel website you can see a couple of pics of this room.

Overall, I would say this property is nice and new, but the craftsmanship (stonework, woodwork, etc) is just average 4 star. There are some cracks and bad cuts in the stone and tile in the showers, it’s not bad, just nothing like what you would see at a 5 star property. Either they rushed the work or cut corners with labor. One particular nit was the cheap asphalt shingles they used, it's just not in keeping with the architectural style and has a kind of cheap look to it. But it’s still a nice place. We had a beautiful unobstructed view of the sea and a nice view over the lower portion of the property. The property is small and fairly tightly packed. The basic rooms are in 4 large buildings (each about 4 to 5 stories) and then the buildings get smaller and shorter as you go down to the beach. Next down toward the beach there are rows of rooms in shorter and smaller buildings that border the three pools, then lower down are the pavillions which are two stories with a total of four rooms (2 up and 2 down, I'd recommend the upstairs ones). I have a map of the property and will email you a JPEG of it if you want. Finally, down at the beach are two villas, each with a private pool. These were just getting finished up. I dont think you can get an upgrade to these.

The three pools are nice, with infinity edges that allow you rest up against the edge and gaze off into the sea (and the islands off shore). The surrounding area is the same sandstone as the bathrooms (I think this stuff is plentiful around here) but it is rough instead of polished. Occupancy was low, so we had no problem finding teak loungers each day in our favorite spot. Service at the pools was a bit spotty at first. I think we sat at the pool that didnt have a dedicated attendant, so we had to either get the guy from the other pool or just go up and ask the bartender at Inifinit to send someone out. That worked like a charm, in fact the staff from Infiniti took a liking to us and treated us like royalty. They started to anticipate what we wanted to order, well maybe that's not the best thing for someone like me who doesnt order the same thing each day! So we had a few extra drinks! The staff spoke ok english, we're not the kind of people who expect everyone to speak fluent english so we are overjoyed to find even minimal english skills. This beats places like Tokyo where I have to drag the waitstaff out to the street to point at pictures or plastic molds of food. We had a few communication issues from time to time, but overall I think that if you have clear speech and a bit of patience this will be not be a problem.

One thing we noticed after about an hour at the pool is that there are some gentlemen with, er, "Guests" staying at this property. To put it bluntly, there were three or four guys who looked like they were about to drop dead with young arm candy, lounging together at the pool. No wedding rings, in fact no communication at all, because as we found at later at dinner these ladies dont speak much english at all. I guess it's a free country and you can do what you want, but my wife and I thought these guys were pretty pathetic though (and in our opinion their presence drags the resort down a quarter or half point in our ratings scale). But it was interesting entertainment and educational for us. Because the hotel occupancy was still fairly low, these couples really seemed to stand out, maybe as occupancy goes up others will not notice it as much as we did.

We strolled over to Infinity around happy hour time, it's a bar/restaurant below the pools about three stories directly above the beach. It has striking views out over the sea and it's built to funnel the sea breeze through, so it's quite comfortable even in the afternoon heat. The food here is decent, some things surprisingly good others just ok, which is what we found at all of the eating establishments here. Overall we were happier with the food than I thought, if you have a couple of days you can find the good things on the menus at each restaurant (we liked the wood fired pizzas and chicken satay skewers at Infinity). Prices were reasonable.

One night we tried out Mez which is the Asian restaurant below Infinity (actually on the second floor above Lattitude Lounge). This place has GREAT mixed drinks! We had several rounds before we even ordered food, in fact we got distracted from our usual ordering strategy (order appetizers first and then move on to entrees after assessing strong and weak spots) while talking about how yummy the drinks were. So we ordered seafood appetizers to see how fresh the seafood was, but order land animal entrees. Big mistake. It turns out that the tuna springroll was fabulous as was my wife's seafood appetizer (I now cannot recall exactly what it was). The entrees were less dynamic, our duck was poor quality, quite tough and gamey. So my advice is to go with the seafood here, it was very high quality. The best part of dinner was the entertainment of the old guys and their guests, one such couple was seated very near us and we watch in awe as the guy ordered everything because his date couldnt read the menu. My wife really felt sorry for this other woman who was about the same age and was wearing a very 80's prom dress and several inches of heel. This couple sat in awkward silence for the entirety of dinner. Rinse and repeat, as the other two couples came in. For us this was a truly educational experience as we had only read about this type of thing. By the way, these seem to be one night guests as we didnt see the same couples the next nights.

After dinner we headed down to Lattitude Lounge for more tasty drinks. We closed the place along with a couple of hipster young Thai kids who were having a good time, but it was pretty quiet, I'm guessing the men and their friends had other things to do in the late evening.

We ate breakfast each day at Elements, which is the restaurant up by the reception level (at the very top of the property). There was a very good buffet which seemed to have been included in our room rate, because it never showed up on our bill. You could also order omelettes, cooked to order.

We also tried out a few spa treatments and I have to say this is where the property really shines. The spa is almost unused, we never saw anyone else in there. The facilities themselves are very nice, zen-like and peaceful. they have a nice dual bed room so you can get treatments with your mate. My wife is a spa addict and I get pulled along for the ride, so we have a bit of experience in rating spas. We each got several different massages and body scrubs. These are all good values for what you get and the staff are very talented. Overall we were surprised at how good the spa was. You can find dirt cheap massages all over SE Asia, but rarely are the cheap ones in a serene setting like this. So you will pay more than elsewhere in Thailand, but you'll enjoy it!

For our transit back to Bangkok we reserved the hotel’s 5 series BMW and were a happy that it was there and waiting for us at 4pm as scheduled. The traffic was much, much heavier on the return so we were glad to have the comfort of the BMW. It took about 3 hours to get into Bangkok, though most of the traffic was on the first stretch of the main highway from Pattaya due to an accident and then inside Bangkok due to Friday rush-hour.

BlacKnox

edited.

gleff

A look at a couple random dates on the website shows the following room types:

Garden View
Ocean View
Deluxe Pavillion
Ocean Front Deluxe Pavillion
2 Bedroom Villa

I assume Garden View is the basic award-type room. I also know that the property offers a 'pool terrace' room for additional 1500 points, perhaps that's just a better room in the garden view category? Or is it a different category of its own?

mrs. gleff and I are staying here on an award next month (booked before it increased to category 3).

Queried them about airport transport, spa, and possible upgrade. Here's snippet of the reply: Complimentary breakfast ^ (Breakfast rates seem to appear @ US$10 add'l at spg.com)
Acknowledging plat upgrades ^

But for those who have been there -- I know that the Pavillion rooms are bigger than the regular rooms and bring higher rates, but is a deluxe pavillion actually preferable to Ocean View?

stephem

Gleff-
Interesting email response. This is exactly why we booked the ocean deluxe pavillion, because I had this fear that they would have refused to upgrade us to that category of room via a Plat upgrade. I think this is garbage the way some properties do this, while others go way beyond the "normal" suite upgrade rule and hand out specialty suites like candy. I think you should contact SPG and fight this, based on our stay in the ocean deluxe, I see no reason that this category room is entirely excluded from the Plat upgrade pool. It's not that special a room...
If they dont do the right thing and give in, I think your best bet is to do a room tour and see what suits you best.
good luck!

gleff

Doesn't surprise me, actually, there aren't many Hawaii properties with ocean view suites in the upgrade pool for instance.

If the reservation is upgraded to deluxe pavillion I'll offer to buy up to ocean front.

Though of course it would be nice if all properties handled thinks like, say, the Westin Diplomat.. we all know that just isn't the case.

gleff

(If no buyup is preferable, I wonder whether the deluxe pavillion is better than just an ocean view room? In other words, should I request a downgrade?)

USAFAN

Oh-my-god. Mrs. USAFAN and I tried hard to find something nice, interesting in Pattaya ... there is nothing. Pattaya is a dump. The pedestrian street is nothing like cheap holes in the wall waiting for hooligans and/or sex tourists.
You better stay in the Hotel Resort and enjoy the sun.

Other than this, we liked Thailand a lot, very interesting, nice and friendly people..

gleff

The plan is actually just to stay for a couple of days in the sun... only have a handful of days in Thailand this trip, so being a car ride away from BKK was a big ^. Plus the Phuket property seems so hit-or-miss by many reports, with much depending on the upgrade you get. And Krabi didn't seem worth the extra hassle for the very quick trip.

USAFAN

gleff:
Have a great time.
I have learned, gained a lot from some of your postings. :-: :-: :-:

Thanks,
USAFAN

BTW, I remember one "restaurant" in BKK which we liked a lot. Very unique, but forgot the name .. another FlyerTalker might know the name and direction.
It was like a large, clean supermarket. You buy the food - fish, meat, vegetable .. - bring it to the open kitchen. They ask you how you want it prepared... delicious ^

bp888

There are several of these "seafood markets." The one that I've been too is off of Sukhumvit on Soi 23 (IIRC). There's also one near Sheraton and Westin Grande Sukhumvit but it's not very good.

Globehopper

I've been meaning to write up a trip report based upon a December 05 stay there.

During our visit Mrs. Globehopper and I were made to feel welcome by all--ranging from Mr. Hardie the very proactive and involved GM to front desk staff to restaurant staff to the driver who drove us back to BKK for more Starwood stays.

Mr. Hardie is a real hands on GM and would help bus tables during breakfast, help set up lounge chaises by the pool and inquire each morning at breakfast as to how we were enjoying our stay. He used to be involved with the Rayavadee when it was in the Starwood constellation. He is quite a contrast from the snobbish GM at the Sheraton in Delhi which has been discussed extensively in other threads.

At check in, front desk staff apologized for the lack of an Ocean view Pavillion suite, but offered us a Deluxe Pavillion instead. We actually liked our suite better as it is set back from the ocean, high atop a hill that looks down upon the lush resort grounds, upon the pool (but not so close as to get the noise poolside) and with the ocean in the background. Even though it is not exactly oceanside, one can still clearly see the ocean. And at night, when the grounds are nicely lit, it creates a more interesting view than peering into the blackness of the sea if one was oceanside.

I would not sweat the details of the oceanside deluxe pavillion versus the more interior locations. I liken this to stadium style seating at a theater. Do you want to sit in the first row right up against the screen (ocean) or back and up a few rows higher to take in a more encompassing view?

Unlike a prior post, I could not find any quality control or construction defects in my Deluxe Pavillion, and I can be very picky about these details!

Breakfast is included for Plats and you can feed off an extensive breakfast buffet.

Mr. Hardie did say that there were plans to install a Plat Lounge sometime within the next year or so, and I mentioned that such a lounge was always welcome, but it would be nice to give Plats the choice as to whether to take breakfast at the lounge or at the buffet.

We're looking forward to our next stay at this fine hotel!

gleff

fwiw, my trip report with photos is here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=552039

Land-of-Miles

We will be staying at the Sheraton Pattaya for 8 days in July and wondered how likely it is we would get an upgrade as a *wood Plat? We are currently booked into a Deluxe Pavillion Room (not oceanfront) with breakfast. From the reports I have read most Plats have been upgraded into this room category and given free breakfast anyway. If I book a cheaper room category and get an upgrade (into exactly the same room) then I could save £300 (not much but a few nice dinners in BKK).

I assume that there is a close to zero likelihood that I will be upgraded from the room I have currently paid for to an oceanfront room?