Construction is going on all over the Sai Keaw beach, also right next to this hotel. Friendly staff, but clueless. "Beachfront" bungalows are not on the beach, but behind reception and a large dusty area. Messy surroundings, noisy beach. Karaoke until past midnight in the hotel restaurant, just meters from the bungalows. We woke up at 7am by construction work outside our window.
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We thought this was a moderately priced place with direct access to a good stretch of the beach and it was easily accessible from the dock. We stayed in the bungalows - we were two couples with two teenage girls apiece - the girls had a bungalow with an adjoining hallway and thought it was the coolest. I don't know that I'd stay in the new wing in the back of the resort which has the road behind it - that would be noisy. We did hear lots of music from the nearby Buddhist temple in the mornings but that was an interesting part of the local culture - unlike the noisy, competing rock music from most of the beach side restaurants at night. The dining was not much of an experience, but the food generally on Koh Samet was pretty ordinary. We enjoyed our stay.
A good place to stay in low season, as you can get value for money. But the rates they charge in high season are on the border of "not worth it".
The place is located on a private beach. We were here the first week of June and had the place pretty much for our self.
If you walk 3 minutes to the next beach you come to a beach full of restaurants etc. And its worth the walk as the food at Samed Grand view hidaway is not very good at all. The food is not good and its more expensive than this other beach.
It has a perfect location and the rooms are nice. We had one hour of rain for the whole week. And this was in so called rainy season!
Stayed for three nights at Grand View Resort. When I got to Koh Samet I walked along White Beach and stopped at almost every place by the beach. I wanted to stay right on the beach in a room/bungalow with AC without paying a fortune. This was not an easy task. Almost all places on the beach are either expensive (3.000 BHT or more) or old with quite a low standard. To find a nice and clean place with AC on the beach is difficult.
Finally I found Grand View Resort. It´s a big place with many differnt types of rooms and bungalows. I stayed in one of their old bungalows (only four of them I think). It was in the first row right behind the beach. The standard is ok compared to many of the other "old" places along the beach. AC, TV, veranda and breakfast included for 2.000 BHT. The location right behind the beach is great.
This hotel looked to be a relatively nice choice from the brochure and location. Aside from the location it really isn't anything special.
On our arrival the hotel manager - definitely not the usual affable, welcoming person you'd expect - was pretty abrupt and terse. He didn't make us feel welcome at all and was almost rude on some points such as simply saying "now give me 500 baht for key deposit" (no 'please' or 'thank you'). The other times we visited the desk with queries he was similarly unenthusiastic about having to stop what he was doing to hear any questions.
Breakfast is a big thing in hotels on islands like this so we specifically booked a hotel which included it. However, over a five night stay they were average at best. Some days pretty much inedible. The coffee tasted like tar/the tea was weak and often were served in clearly dirty cups.
The hotel next door had a major serve-yourself buffet breakfast which make this one look like prison food - and for basically the same price. Worse yet, every morning there were staff watching TV and chatting loudly near the breakfast area - ruining any hope of a serene beach-side breakfast.
The room itself was fine. It was new-ish and clean but, as expected it failed in many small areas which added up to making you feel a bit ripped off.
For a start, there was no telephone in the room - no way to get extra towels or mini-bar. There was no mini-bar actually and, worse, all of the fridges are hooked up to the door-card system meaning they turn off with the lights and TV etc whenever you leave the room - rendering the fridge completely pointless unless you figure out how to doctor the door-card system (a piece of card-board usually works).
In addition:
- No toilet roll holder. Just a roll of paper in a box on the counter.
- A broken towel rail (it just came off the wall the first time we used it
- A freshly made bed which still seemed to have sand in it every day (how on earth?)
- A TV which was fuzzy on every single channel in three rooms we checked.
- A shower drain which smelt like sulphur the entire stay (think rotten eggs)
- No venting from the toilet meaning any smell just came into the room itself
- Gaps in the bathroom window which allow mosquitoes to enter the room and no way to close them to prevent it.
- Construction nearby started at about 8am every day. The workers had a loud radio which was on all day meaning there was no possibility for any peace/rest in your room in the day unless you were in an absolute beachfront room.
This hotel is the best case of looks-great-on-paper but is actually pretty poor I've encountered. The larger and slightly more expensive place next door is worth every extra cent you pay.
In all this is probably the worst hotel I've encountered in the 2000bath plus price range in eight years of visiting Thailand.
Riever, I think that it might have been us who you heard complaining when you stayed at Samed Grand View. When we got there the prices where higher than what they had confirmed when we made the reservation. They also made us pay for a "Gala dinner" for New Years Eve, which was totally overprized. This was also something that they said they could waive when we made the reservation. When we finally got the bungalow, we got some bungalows in the back to the hotel, in the middle of something that must be described as a combination of slum and construction site (they started working at 7 a.m.) When we complained to the manager (European) she was unbelievably rude. They also refused to give us any refund at all since we paid everything in advance when we checked in. This even though I had met some people the first night when I was at a restaurant who actually could take over our bungalow so they wouldn’t loose any money if we checked out. I would strongly suggest all travelers to stay as far away as possible from Samed Grand View Resort.
