Excellent stay in this very nice hotel that I strongly recommend you if you go to Phuket ^. I had booked a Deluxe room and was upgraded to Ocean room which is larger and has a nice balcony with sea view. The hotel is located conveniently 10-15 min drive from HKT airport, on a hill overlooking Naithon beach and occupies quiet a large area with several small buildings/bungalows and pool villas.
I had booked the airport transfer and so was welcomed at the airport and was driven to the hotel with fresh water and cold perfumed towels, accompanied by someone form the « welcomer team » taking special care of guests with status
.
Upon arrival, I was directed to the priority desk for Le Club member (1st time I see one staffed ! ^). A glass of champagne was offered as a welcome drink
. The hotel organization was presented (pools, restaurants, etc). Another drink voucher was given (was told that it was valid for everything including champagne, but in practice, it is valid for wine, beer, soft drinks but not champagne but their wine selection was quite decent, sot they were forgiven
). The Plat benefits include free laundry/pressing for 5 items (use dit – no pb was not added to bill).
The hotel was very busy (they told me close to full occupancy). It was mainly families, as this was during the summer holidays. About 60% Asian , 40% Westerners/Australians. Despite the numerous families with young children, it was not a « factory-like » hotel and people were behaving very well.
The hotel lobby & bar is very large and pleasant, with very comfy sofas, and semi-beds where it is so nice to read a book in and fall asleep ! Also some sofas surrounded by water…very romantic at sunset !
There are 2 pools. The main one, under the lobby, overlooking the beach and at the same level as the pool bar and main restaurant :
The secondary one, upper on the hills, near the fitness room and kindergarden :
The pool villas (look very nice…)
:
Two restaurants :
- the main one where they serve breakfast buffet and where you can have à la carte dinner + Thai buffet on some evening. The à la carte food was better than the buffet because, as often with buffet, the warm food is in fact cold and dry. Also, this Thaï buffet evening, the restaurant was archi full and the service was completely disorganized with staff running around, taking forever to take your order, making mistakes with drinks and other ordered meals, not removing dirty plates, etc. When I complained about all this, I was kindly offered a glass of wine
.
- An Italian restaurant : very good, when you are bored of Thaï food
There is a large business center/computer room/meeting room. One of the nicest I’ve ever seen in a hotel, as you can judge on the 2 pictures below :
My Ocean room. I really liked the decor and ambiance of the room. It includes a Nespresso machine, a bluetooth speaker, 2 plates of cakes, a separate sofa and a terrace with another sofa. About the Nespresso machine, one negative point is that you are allowed only 2 free capsules for your entire stay (normally it’s per day). Some more are available in the room but for a (small) fee. This is a bit nickel & diming, especially for Elite members. Free soft drinks from the minibar (refilled every day and your welcomer team is asking you about your preferred drinks and they accordingly adjust the content of the minibar ^).
View from the room/terrace :
The beach : easily accesible from the pool via a flight of stairs. The hotel has also a shuttle running to different parts of the beach. It is important to note that it is a public beach. The hotel does not have a private area and this is a pity because it is very nice from above but once you’re on…it is a complete garbage dump
. Totally scandalous
: hundreds of flip-flop shoes, lighters, cans , plastic and glass bottles, papers, etc. Furthermore, do not expect to swim there. It’s a very dangerous beach with big waves and very strong currents…a heaven for surfers but not for regular beach clients.
So knowing this, I stayed no more than 10 minutes on the beach…and a big storm was coming, so time to run back to the hotel !!!
The hotel from the beach :
At sunset, the place gets very nice. The bar/lobby get animated with a very good Philippino singer. One evening, we had the « GM free evening cocktail », I had a quick chat with him.
Check-out was slow
, as I used some Le Club vouchers and I faced once again some training issues of the staff (the lady had to call somebody, who had also to call a 3rd person…). I recently suggested to Amy (
Accorconcierge) that Accor should implement a bar code on the vouchers which could be just scanned by the staff at check-out to check the validity and the 40 Euros automatically converted into local currency and inserted in your bill.
Overall, an excellent stay in this very nice hotel. Thank you to Seen and Ariel for the excellent welcome and service