Royal Orchid Sheraton = Great Value for Budget Minded

100   Recommended
Junior Suite
May 11, 2018 by

 Map | 2 Reviews | 100% Recommended
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Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel & Towers
 Map | 2 Reviews | 100% Recommended

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Junior Suite

Liked:
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Junior Suite

I recently had a decent 3-night stay at Royal Orchid Sheraton.  You can find a few fairly negative reports here and there on FT or on other blogs. I think you can take some of those with a grain of salt.  Some of it is true, some of it has improved recently, and some of it… well consider the price you are paying when evaluating the drawbacks of this property.  You can occasionally find rates below 3000++ THB at this hotel, sometimes as low as 2700++ THB, and for my most recent stay I also found BRG for 2100++ THB (I chose the 25% discount).  At this price, it is great value for the money.

Room

I historically had great success for suite upgrades at this hotel, but with a very low BRG this time, I thought perhaps they would be less inclined to upgrade me.  But they came through again, although this time in the junior suite rather than the executive suite where I got upgrades in the past.  The junior suite is noticeably smaller (55 sq m) than the executive suite (70 sq m) and the bathroom is not as nice.  But I was quite pleased to get a suite when I was not sure I would get one at all.  The junior suite has a living room separated from the bedroom, similar to the exec suite. The bathroom is fairly standard but I noticed they were a bit stingy on refilling soap, lotion, tissues, etc.  They have the standard Sheraton brand “Le Grand Bain” which I am not particularly fond of.  There is a TV in both the living room and bedroom, and a DVD player in the living room.  The walk-in closet is quite large.  The hotel shows its age however so generally speaking you are getting a run-of-the-mill room that will not wow you, rather than something modern and luxurious.  Some areas have low ceilings for example hallways, the entrance to the room, and the bathroom, which is far from impressing.  However you have the river view which many other hotels won't have.

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Dining

As noted above in this thread, ROS brought back free breakfast for Platinums in the restaurant downstairs.  A very positive change!  The breakfast has lots of choices and something that will please everyone : Western, Asian, Indian, etc.  The main knock remains that the restaurant is crowded and seating arrangements feels cramped. We had breakfast in the Club Lounge once.  My complaint with breakfast in the lounge in the past was that it was exclusively western options, which for me is very disappointing in Bangkok.  The good news is that they upgraded breakfast in the lounge and now you can have a few Asian options for example I had sautéed veggies and another dish was noodles with tofu + vegetables.  Happy hour timing in the evening has changed.  Drinks are now served starting at 4:30pm, food is brought at 5:30pm, and both last until 7:30pm.  Three hours for drinks is quite generous.  I particularly enjoy the bar in the lounge ; I usually order special mixed drinks. Food options are not bad and I found them much better than at their main competitor the Millenium Hilton across the river.  There is a chef preparing a specialty dish in the lounge every evening and there is a good variety of hot food, along with several desserts whereas MH has no dessert in the evening.  The lounge has quite a bit of space and is an enjoyable place to relax in the evening.  The only negative is that afternoon tea has been cut out recently.

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Overall

If you are coming from halfway around the world and have money to spend, the ROS might not even be in your plans because you might want top luxury since you have travelled that far, and luxury tends to come at a good price in Bangkok so for $100 more per night, many people will think it’s worth spending extra and get far more bang for your buck than you would in Europe or North America.  However if you care about value for the money, ROS simply cannot be ignored if you are Plat.  The hotel gives you very high odds of a suite upgrade (possibly the most likely of all SPG hotels in BKK to give you a suite), you get a decent club lounge, breakfast in the morning in the restaurant with good spread, and a location that will be attractive to many first time tourists because of the river.  All that for a price sometimes sub-3000 THB; it will be challenging for you to find better elsewhere at that price point.  In general I prefer the design and layout of the suites at Millenium Hilton and probably the gap will grow as MH is currently undergoing renovations.  However at MH you have to pay for the suites even if you are diamond, so you might end up paying 50% more for MH and that gap might grow post renovations.  While I prefer MH overall and I have been there far more often than ROS, I can still say with confidence that ROS is better value.   You will sometimes find limited service hotels such as Aloft, 4P, Hyatt Place, Double Tree, for a price in the same range as ROS, and sometimes ROS is even cheaper.  For other dates when ROS is a bit more expensive than normal, you can find Le Meridien for a similar price as ROS, then in that case it’s a different comparison and indeed LM is a better choice unless you care about having a Club Lounge.  

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