Very beautiful, brand-new hotel with superb facilities. Unfortunately, the service, the organization, and above all the way guests are treated are absolutely terrible. This is nowhere near the standard of a 5-star hotel. There is clearly a complete lack of hospitality know-how.
The hotel’s organization feels more like a campsite than a 5-star establishment. Everything is complicated, controlled and becomes a discussion with the guest, even for things that should be completely normal in a hotel of this category.
For example, you are given two cards: one to leave in the room to activate the electricity and another to enter and exit the room. In the end, you can only keep one. If you ask for an additional card, you are clearly told that you must return three cards at check-out, otherwise you will be charged 100 baht per card. Charging 100 baht for a simple plastic card is outrageous. I have never seen anything like this in any hotel.
The same problem applies to the pool towels. You are given two per room, and if you need dry towels, if you forgot yours, or if housekeeping simply forgot to leave them in your room, getting a towel becomes almost an investigation. On one occasion, housekeeping forgot to put pool towels in our room. I sent my children to ask the pool staff for some, and they were turned away twice.
I therefore went myself to explain the situation. The staff member practically made me feel like a liar, asking me if I was really sure there were no towels in my room and telling me that he would check. I explained that I was going to report the situation to reception and asked for his name. He refused to give it to me, completely ignored me and walked away.
Seriously, how can a guest be treated this way over a simple pool towel? This is a service included in the stay, not something that should have to be negotiated or justified.
Overall, the staff are very unfriendly, with the exception of the restaurant staff. The rest make you feel as though you are dealing with robots, and above all as though you are staying for free and they are doing you a personal favor.
The worst part is the staff responsible for the “sports activities” — if we can even call them that. The hotel sells its rooms with sports packages, and in our experience this was a huge disappointment. The staff are arrogant, condescending and, above all, extremely rude. Some of their behavior is incredibly aggressive and completely lacking in basic manners.
One example: my daughter was simply playing in the pool with her sister. She was going underwater, coming back up and waving to her sister. A lifeguard came over to me and asked what my daughter wanted from him. I explained that she was simply playing with her sister and was not talking to him at all. Yet he kept insisting that she was looking at him and waving at him. I do not see how he could possibly know this, as she was wearing dark, tinted swimming goggles and he was about six meters away from her.
I repeatedly explained that she was playing with her sister, that she was eight years old and that she was not addressing him. Despite this, he continued standing in front of me, repeatedly saying that he wanted to know what she wanted. I eventually became frustrated and asked him what more he wanted me to say and why he could not simply leave us alone when I had already explained the situation. He eventually walked away without apologizing and continued giving us dirty looks.
And this is just one example among many others.
I reported all of this to a manager, but apart from telling me that she would speak to the people involved, I did not feel any genuine willingness to take my complaint seriously, offer any compensation, or even try to improve our stay.
We had booked two rooms at this hotel and we deeply regret our choice.
Another major disappointment is the way the hotel presents itself as an establishment offering numerous sports activities, including a climbing wall. In reality, there are only two climbing sessions per week, with just six places available for the entire hotel. Needless to say, you need an incredible amount of luck to get a spot. Presenting this as a genuine sports offering is very misleading.
In summary: a beautiful, brand-new hotel with excellent facilities, but a terrible guest experience. The facilities may be worthy of a 5-star hotel, but the service, organization and, above all, the attitude of some members of staff are very, very far from that standard. We are extremely disappointed with our stay.
