Having visited Railay Bay for over 20 years, Rayavadee was always a place I wanted to stay, and a few years ago was our first visit. A truly memorable one at that, and once was never enough hence our return visit to this incredible resort in paradise.

Absolute peace and quiet, complete privacy in luxurious villas. The customer service is impeccable, world class in every possible conceivable way. The location, the views, the beaches, the jungle, the destination.

The is by far the worlds best hotel resort, Definitely recommended.

A positive remark first: the staff is very friendly and the rooms are clean and spacious. But that is where the positive aspects end...
We chose this hotel, because we wanted to relax and chill out on a beautiful beach. We traveled 16 hours to get to Krabi (which is only reachable by boat, which made us mistakingly believe it must be tranquil, and here is what we found:
The beach is beautiful, but is a major day excursion trip and as of 10am until 9pm is crowed with hundreds of tourists who are brought over mostly in very noisy, polluting long tail boats. The beach is so full of these parked boats that you think you are in a parking lot of a big supermarket. Many boats blast out some daft music and compete with each other on terms of who has the loudest speaker system. They come and go the whole day, so that there is constant noise which make you feel you are at Grand Central Station in New York.
These hundreds of day-tourists need to go to the toilet, and yes - you guessed right - they try to sneak in to the hotel, and use the hotel's facility. There is some security, but they can only do so much. People will climb over the rocks and walk through the bar to use the toilets (or worse, do their business right at the beach or in the ocean...)
The hotel said, they build public toilets for these day-guests, but they are not enough and moreover not visible as they are built to the side of the resort so most day-tourists never see them or know that they exist (there is no signage visible from the beach).
There are bars and restaurants nearby, and they bang out the music until 4am EVERY NIGHT. We arrived on a Saturday, and first thought they had a wedding at the hotel, only to realize the music came from further away, and they party every night of the week until 4 in the morning. Forget about sleeping with open windows...
The food at the restaurant is ok, but the atmosphere is from decades ago. The life band plays cover versions from the fifties and sixties like Burt Bacharach's "Raindrops keep falling on my head" from 1969 and the like... My grandmother would probably have enjoyed this type of music...
Now you can argue that the noise of the nearby bars as well as the invasion of day tourists at the beach is beyond the hotel's control, and I might even agree with that to some point. But then why is the hotel publishing photos that show a vastly different environment and not even using small print to warn potential guest that there might be noise and massive hordes of day-tourists at the beach? (See photos).
And above all that, how does the hotel justify its exorbitant price levels when it fails to provide the luxury of a nice beach with tranquility?
We booked for 6 nights, but checked out after 3 and went to another luxury resort a short boat trip away, where we found what we were looking for in every aspect.
We will definitely return to Thailand but surely not to the Rayavadee and certainly not at these prices.

We was burn out from Bangkok looking for a place where to relax, enjoy the good food, nice views, good snorkeling and running... honestly we have since 7 years ago been visiting koh lipe, krabi, phiket, samed, samui, khao lak etc... the best service from the staff is at Rayawadee all smiles and nice words... the best breakfast ever, for the food you can choose from western food, Mediterranean, asian fusion.
Walking all round the rooms on the way to the beach or just walking will be an u ique experiences you will meet monkeys, lezards, etc...