⭐️ Beautiful resort, friendly staff — but serious accessibility and checkout concerns
We had high hopes for Mida Grande Resort Phuket. The resort is attractive, our accommodation itself was lovely, with an ocean view, balcony spa and two en-suite bedrooms, and the staff we encountered were generally friendly, polite and genuinely helpful.
Unfortunately, two issues significantly affected our experience: accessibility and the handling of the room deposit at checkout.
♿ Accessibility — a serious concern
Before travelling, we made a special assistance request through On the Beach on 29 January 2026. At the beginning of February, On the Beach confirmed by email that “special assistance” had been applied to our booking.
On arrival, however, we were told that the only available accommodation of the type we had booked was in Building 4.
Building 4 has no ramp or lift providing access to the building itself. There are two flights of stairs to ground level, meaning that a wheelchair has to be physically carried up and down those stairs every time the room is accessed.
We were told that hotel staff might be able to carry the wheelchair for us. We genuinely appreciated the staff offering to help, but this is not what we would consider proper accessible accommodation. It leaves a wheelchair user dependent on finding someone available to physically carry the wheelchair every time they need to enter or leave their accommodation, and puts the guest in the uncomfortable position of wondering whether they are expected to tip staff for doing so.
Even accessing the dining hall was problematic. Hotel staff eventually showed us a ramp through a staff/kitchen entrance used for deliveries. The route was not particularly well lit, but this became the practical route we had to use whenever we wanted to access the dining facilities.
We want to be fair here: the individual staff members were helpful and did their best to find solutions. Our concern is with the underlying accessibility arrangements.
It does, however, leave a serious question for On the Beach: if our special assistance requirement had been recorded on our booking months before arrival, what information was actually passed to the hotel, and was the suitability of the accommodation ever checked?
🏨 The checkout and chipped-mug incident
The second issue arose at checkout.
We spoke to reception twice on the day before departure, once in the morning and again in the evening. We explained that we would be leaving the following morning and specifically requested that someone come to our room to inspect it while our four suitcases were collected.
Nobody came.
We therefore carried all four suitcases down ourselves, including negotiating the stairs from Building 4.
At checkout, however, a room inspection took place and we were told that a mug had been slightly chipped — supposedly by us.
It was not us.
We were asked to provide a written explanation, which we did on the hotel’s own headed paper. We clearly stated that we had not chipped the mug, and the statement was dated and timed. We photographed it before leaving.
We were subsequently told by reception that the deposit held on our card would be released.
The whole episode was unnecessarily stressful, particularly because we had proactively asked for the room to be inspected before departure while we were still there, but nobody attended.
The good news is that the deposit has now been fully refunded and the money has cleared back onto our card. We therefore don’t have a financial loss, but the way the situation arose and the uncertainty surrounding the deposit at checkout left a very unpleasant final impression.
🔎 A word of advice to future guests
After our experience, we would strongly recommend that future guests photograph and document the condition of their room immediately upon arrival — furniture and wall corners, mugs and glasses, towels and bed linen, and any existing marks, chips, dents or damage.
This is not because we were told that doing so was an official hotel requirement. It is simply advice we would give after our own experience, because we would not want another guest to find themselves in the position we found ourselves in.
If you enjoy investigative work, evidence gathering and building a case file, you may actually love this resort. Future police officers, detectives and lawyers might feel right at home! 😄
For ordinary holidaymakers who arrive expecting to unpack their bags and start their holiday rather than document the condition of every mug, glass, towel, sheet, wall and piece of furniture, it may be a rather different experience.
⭐ Overall
We genuinely want to give credit where it is due. The staff we dealt with were friendly, polite and helpful, and we appreciate the efforts some of them made to assist us with the accessibility difficulties.
Our concerns are primarily about the systems, arrangements and management decisions, rather than the individual staff members.
For a resort of this standard, we would expect a wheelchair user to be able to access their accommodation and main facilities without being carried up two flights of stairs or having to use a kitchen/staff delivery entrance.
And we would expect checkout to leave guests feeling relaxed and confident — not feeling that they need to have documented every item in the room and prepared an evidence file in case they are subsequently held responsible for something they did not do.
For us, these issues took the shine off what could otherwise have been a very enjoyable stay.
