The location is superb and the beach is beautiful.

The staff are lovely, charming and friendly.

The hotel looks and feels like it was built twenty years ago and never refurbished since. We stayed in May so also took advantage of the pay 3 nights stay 6 nights promotion so ended up paying around $200 per night. Also we booked a bottom-end room and got upgraded to a top-end room (hotel mostly empty) so the price ended up being almost fair but still too much for the hotels shoddy state of repair!

We arrived during a huge rain storm, got tld we'd been updgraded and were shown to our cottage. Within the first ten minutes we found: very large dead cockroach fell out of the mosquito net bounced off the bed and onto the floor, the toilet stank of sewage (i assume due to the heavy raining), one of the airconditioners was broken and when someone came to remove the cockroach we found the bed to be full of ants. To the hotel's credit we were swiflty moved to a new cottage (with yet a further upgrade to beachside) and within an hour received a kind note of apologies and a gift of a bottle of wine. The new room was essentially fine except that given the general state of disrepair, most windows did not shut propperly and the door (even when closed) had a two inch gap between the door and the wall. As a result we had ants all the time, at least one cockroach in the bathroom on most days, and a lizard scuttling around on the last day. All of these are not a problem on their own but add them alltogehter for a room which under normal circumstances costs upwars of $850 a night and you've got a problem.

Breakfast was nice. The staff prompt and friendly. We never ate at the hotel as it was relatively expensive and the athmospehere really quite grim on a low-season evening. One point which really got on my nerves is that during our six day stay the huge windows of the breakfast room never ever got cleaned. You could hardly see through them. Fair enough it rained most days but these looked like they hadn't been cleaned in weeks (at two nearby hotels we notices the windows in the lobby areas being cleaned on a daily baisis). This in addition to beachtowels to stop the rain from coming in under the windows/doors of the breakfast room added to the general shoddy feeling.

True some cottages were being repaired, though little attempt to hide these works away allowd for us to walk past a colleciton if discarded toilets every time we walked towards our room.

We ended up paying around $200 per night for our stay and i feel it was still too much for the quality of the hotel. The official price for our beachside cottage is (low-season) over $850 which is a total outrage.

In my view the hotel should shut down completely for six-twelve monnths and get itself a complete makeover!

we have just returned from our stay at the chedi hotel 5th to the 15th may. we booked via trailfinders and found them to be very good. they had a promotion on, stay over 4 nights and receive the same free. therefore our accommadation was £750 for ten nights for a superior room.

the rooms:

all the rooms are almost identical whether it be superior or standard hillside. all you pay extra for is the location of the room. superior is closer to the restaraunt, pool etc while the hillside ones are up quite a lot of steps. i do reccommend paying the extra for superior as you get a sea view and there is less steps to deal with. we paid an extra £250 fot the ten nights. it would have been £500 with a standard room.

they are individual cottages with double bed and mozzy net and bathroom with shower. come with tv, dvd player and minibar, fridge. nicely finished and they are doing a lot of refurbishment in low season so i give them credit for that.

keep your doors closed at all times as it is thailand and you get cockcroaches, lizards and locusts making appearances.

food

breakfast is excellent, thats all i need to say. food and drink inside the hotel is expensive at maybe four times the price then down the road at surin bay inn

service

the maids are excellent, we left a lot of valuables including money about and everything was fine. kept really tidy.

minibar

dont touch it, we had already paid our bill when checking out and when we went to get into our taxi for the airport, they ran after us looking another 500 baht for drinks we had not taken. cause we were in a hurry to go we just had to pay it.

the beach

it is a private beach and really really nice. you get drinks brought to you by people not working for the chedi. a beer about £1 in an ice bucket

Here is some information about prices you should expect to pay when staying around the chedi or shopping in patong which is the best for it

60 baht is equal to £1GBP

taxis

get one at the bottom of the hill of the chedi. they have set prices so they wont budge
450 baht to patong which is a half hour drive, ask to get dropped at beach road for shopping. dont go to phuket town, it does not have much at all.

restaraunts

the surin bay inn is the best, walk down the hill from the chedi, turn right and its a few minutes from there. staff are great and so is the food and really cheap. also twenty of us ate there and not one had a dodgy tummy after so i can say its definitly safe

average main course with rice or chips 140 baht
beer 60 baht
coke 25 baht

shopping

when bargaining divide the price they give you by 4 and aim to get it for a third is a good rule of thumb

go to patong beach road for handbags, trainers, jeans shirts etc

all types of designer hangbags,expect to pay between 600 to 1500 for top designer labels like jimmy choo etc, be prepared for the shop keepers to originally ask for outrageous prices

trainers
i got a pair of air max 97 for 1500 baht
energie trainers 1200 baht

t shirts
quiksilver and billabong 150 baht. this seems to be a set price round all the shops, dont pay any more unless they are the golf t shirts or lacoste ralph lauren etc, they are 200 baht

shorts

250 to 400 baht

sunglasses

200 baht

tailor made suit £90 for my hugo boss from "surin armani" at the bottom of the hill from the chedi, really good tailor

cigarettes

£1 per packet

jeans

about £15 a pair

I can't say I wasn't warned, and neither should you, if you are reading all these fine reviews here. The positive ones are correct in that yes, the location is isolated, the beach is great if you like to avoid crowds and if you don't mind walking up and down hills. But the negative ones have a point, in that there is nothing around, and the rooms are looking shall we say a little "tired." This place is in need of serious refreshing to justify the rates. The 10 year old + tube TV and 90s era woodsy motif is a dead giveaway. I would not stay here again. To give you a frame of reference, I stayed at the Tongsai Bay Cottages on Samui last year [no, I do not work for them], and the comparison is not even close. Tongsai is everything I hoped that the Chedi would be. I know the Chedi has a reputation as a wonderful upscale brand in Asia, but they do not live up to their reputation on Phuket. Weather warning: It was dramatically HOT in late April [a week ago] when I stayed, so if you've gone to Thailand in, say, Nov-Dec-Jan, be advised that conditions are much more oppressive for someone from cooler climates. It seems like everybody was boiling hot, including the locals who supposedly can handle it. This is decidely not the Chedi's fault, but just have that in mind when you plan to come and determine if weather's an issue.

We have just come back from 6 days at the chedi, phuket.

on arrival we were shown our roooms which were very dissapointing, dark, no views and miles away from anywhere, close to the road. We negotiated to upgrade to sea views for 2,500 thai bahts per night per room on top of what we had originally paid. it was worth it even though it was an added expense.

the hotel is in a fantastic location with a wonderful beach, however it is very tired and needs updating.

the staff were friendly but the management were very much in the background which was a pity.

The food was average and expensive, apart from the breakfasts which were excellent.

Would we return no - really felt that the hotel staff were after every single baht they could get from us, charging for the internet, charging for water at meal times when we could not drink the tap water, ridiculous price of hotel taxis, expensive meals and the general shabbiness of the hotel which has been left to go to seed. A huge shame as the setting is fantastic.