Maison Dalabua Hotel — Attraction in Luang Prabang

I enjoyed my stay here very much - mainly for the garden environment, breakfast and the room.

While Maison Dalabua may be a bit of walk from the old town, it is a nice oasis from the hustle and bustle of the old town, especially during the operations of the night market. This hotel has very well maintained gardens. There are also water lily ponds here, which make for a great sight when you are having breakfast next to it. In the evening, the air is cool, and it is nice to take a stroll through the gardens.

The breakfast is good. On my first day, I was brought around the buffet table so that I could ask any questions about the dishes. Such hospitality is a first for me, and even 5 star hotels like Pan Pacific don't offer this level of hospitality. In the fruits section, there are cut fruits and also a fruit basket of apples and other fruits. The bread is also homemade, as is the jams. They have some interesting jams like tamarind jam. The hot food selection is rather limited and tends to be geared towards vegetarians, like roasted tomatoes and young pumpkin. The meat dishes that were available are the porridge, and the hard boiled egg, which had it's yolk replaced with a meat ball. On my second day, they had fried rice and LP sausage instead. I found the beverage section to be very comprehensive. They have detox juices and fruit infused waters. They also offer coffee and tea, and hot chocolate. If you need your drink to be sweeter, there's sugar cane syrup too. Come early to get a good table facing the water lily ponds.

The room has warm lighting, giving the room a welcoming feeling. The toilet on the other hand is brighter. There is a welcome souvenir in the form of a spool of thread keychain. The air conditioning is limited to a low of 22 degrees Celsius. This can be a problem as the room takes a while to be cooled. The bed is comfortable but does not have a headboard. 2 500ml bottles of water are complimentary and you can call reception for more. Green tea leaves are offered in a bottle for you to steep in a teapot. If you are into coffee, there is a French press.

Service here is friendly and attentive. Transport to the airport can be arranged. The tuk tuk costs 7USD, whereas the minivan costs 7USD per person.

Some misses though. If you come down late for breakfast, say around 8.30am, the food starts to run out. The staff were efficient in bringing out bread and cut fruits. But with the hot food, they were slower to replace the scrambled eggs and fried noodles. At the front desk, the lime infused water was rather bitter, a sign that it was steeped too long. As mentioned by other reviewers, some maintenance is required. Some of the nails for the floorboards in my room were starting to come out, making the...

Maison Dalabua used to be a magical oasis, set in a peaceful tropical garden with picturesque ponds. While the setting still is utterly magic, the hotel owners seem to have shifted their focus from the pre-pandemic one which then was making every effort to give more than their best to make their guests enjoy an atmosphere of serene peace, individual care and “soigné”. The focus seems to be more on making quick money they probably need to stay aloft. Bathroom articles like soap and shampoo that used to be high quality, organic even, now are ordinary shampoos filled straight from the supermarket shampoo bottles. Small surprises of attention like flowers in the room or a surprise tea in the afternoon with a few biscuits - all no more. The most visible drop in quality is the breakfast buffet: no more really fresh bread or croissants, almost no more Laotian specialities, quite ordinary really. I guess it’s a bit similar everywhere in Asia - post-pandemic tourism never really recovered from the survival mode with the then understandable cuts and focuses on quantity now, hence more Asian, Chinese groups in particular at the expense of European style individuality and quality that would also appeal to Asian connaisseurs, just not in masses. It’s a business decision that I can truly understand - it's easy money and in masses. But in my experience during my stay here for three nights now, its consequence means less care for detail and elegance and sacrificing serenity and peace for the crude, average wealthy Asian tourist who looks for bling bling and karaoke and pays well for it. This becomes evident in the hotel’s restaurant which uses loud music and at times even karaoke’-style entertainment for the big groups that arrive in vans. Impossible to escape the beats and the sound of sore voices anywhere in the hotel in the evenings. So, someone like me also needs to take a decision, which is to keep the beautiful memories of Maison Dalabua as it was until a few years ago, but to alas now stay away from it once and for all.

I would still like to mention the Dalabua staff who are absolutely wonderful, meek, patient and still smiling even when some guests behave like they behave. So chapeau to Monsieur Raphael for maintaining that special level of his...

Stunning hotel, breakfast had a good selection, we had a clear view of the pool from our room and it was never too busy there was always beds available. Staff were friendly in the hotel and helpful as well, they do twice a day tidying of rooms as well which is nice if you want it done in the evening rather than morning. The pool was lovely, always a shady spot somewhere. The hotel was very well maintained, the gardener's were always hard at work and so were staff with keeping the pool tidy and the rooms as well. There was so many nice touches like the free drink vouchers, free key chains and bags.

We had an one issue with the complimentary free drinks in that when we went down to the restaurant for the drinks we thought we would be able to sit at the bar and have them, we were instead asked if we had a reservation and that there were no free tables despite there being many and it being early on in the evening. We were told to go to the other part of the restaurant where breakfast was served after having our vouchers taken away, the staff there then said they also have no free tables (again despite their being many), having said we only wanted drinks to both restaurant areas and nothing else we were shown to sit in a walkway bit which was full. It felt like we were not welcome at all as we only wanted the free drinks and apparently needed to reserve a whole table to have said drinks in advance. They did not seem to cater to those just wanting the free drinks and to sit at a bar, it was quite a bitter note to leave on as we had kept forgetting to have the free drinks until the last night. We were finally able to have them delivered to our room but it was such an unwelcoming experience that I'm glad we didn't eat at the restaurant.

If the hotel wishes to give free drinks (which were very nice) then a bar to sit at to just have them or even being offered the choice to have it in room straight away rather than being passed from staff to staff would be...