The pictures of this place on the website show an idyllic hotel - and I am sure when they were taken, that was true. Similarly the reports - most of which were written in 2009 provide a portrail of a wonderful place to stay which is why I booked my girlfriend and I in there for a week as a special treat during a four-week holiday. What a disappointment!
The good points:
The hotel processed the payment in full promptly and without error when I booked the room.
The bad points:
Our transfer from the ferry was in the back of a pick-up truck (seriously!). We were greeted by a dirty pool, filthy and worn out sun umbrellas, holes in the sheets of our bed, filthy tile grout in the shower, and cobwebs in the room. The water in the taps is sometimes dark-brown, although not always.
The limited menu is overpriced, there is no wine (12 euro corkage to BYO) and they are regularly out of stock of basic items. Breakfast was exceptionally poor - pancakes shop-bought and served cold, fruit juice UHT and from a carton, yoghurt served in plastic pots, tepid coffee. The crockery set is an eclectic mix of rather nice designer-ware pottery and cheap rubbish that is clearly being used to replace breakages. Basic things like lids on tea-pots are not always available.
The staff are willing but trained inadequately in English and customer service. They have poor personal standards - dirty shoes, trousers too short or the wrong colour, dirty t-shirts / polo shirts: this is apparently condoned by the local management.
The water-sports advertised on the website are charged as an extra (350 baht / hour) and are worn out to the point of being unusable and dangerous (e.g. no bung in the water-tight compartment in the canoe). The pool table has a four-inch rip in the cloth and only one of the cues has tips. The pool-side sun-bed cushions have holes in them and are generally worn, the beach-side sun-beds have no cushions. The room safe did not work. The windows and doors of the room have warped in the sun leaving big gaps around the frames which the local mosquito population exploit. At high-tide the beach disappears almost completely except for a small area which is shaded by large trees. The local night-club has a new sound system which starts at about 23.00.
We complained and asked to leave, but were told to contact our agents - easy we thought, since we booked with their head office. E-mails (several) not replied to, phone calls not returned, never the right person in the office to help, excuse after excuse. The receptionist at the hotel spent 20 minutes on the phone to head office when we said we wanted to leave before putting the phone down and telling us that head office was closed and there was no-one there to talk to. We were advised that they were unwilling to refund us and made no attempt to improve.
Summary:
Overall, a real disappointment - it seems that the owners are milking this place like a cash-cow and not investing in the necessary maintenance and training needed to keep up the high standards one expects when paying good money.
