Niranapa Boutique Resort (ณีรานภา) — Attraction in Karon

Ignore the negative reviews here, I genuinely dunno what they’re on about!

The room:

So clean and new, no issues whatsoever with having an open bathroom as I was by myself. The shower did not create any steam at all. Great aircon, huge bed, every crack and crevice is CLEAN. Only annoyance was that the tv turned on every time you came in and put the card in the slot and it would take a while to load and turn off. Whatever, not worth demoting any points for but I do think that automatic setting should be switched off lol

The service: Everyone here is so lovely (which is consistent with my experience in Thailand :) ) from the front desk to the pool bar to the cleaners. We checked out at 10am and had until 9:30pm for our flights, they kept our luggage safe and let us hang out by the pool all day and even provided us towels and access to the showers in the sauna room. Super accommodating!!

The breakfast; Um, what the hell is that person on about getting sick of the selections??! This buffet slaps!! It was always stocked up with loads of fresh food and had a tone of variety, I could genuinely eat there for weeks. I think they even rotate out a lot of the foods every week or so. It was such a good breakfast, I still think about it hahah!

The vibe: Very zen. I think they probably want to be seen as a more yoga slash wellness retreat looking at their marketing, and I think it’s falling short for some reason. They didn’t have the promised yoga sessions running and I assume that’s due to low interest cause the gym was also empty (and small, just an FYI). 99% of the people there where couples, or small young families. My friends and I stuck out a little haha! The pool area is a little small for the amount of guests they can cram in, sometimes all the beds where occupied or only the really sunny ones where free - no biggy, but I can see how a long term stayer might get a little annoyed haha. You could swim in the pool after the curfew it just wasn’t manned, so that was kind of cool!

Location: Awesome! Everything is so close but cause of the way Niranapa is built it’s really protected from any noise and hubbub, and this allowed it to remain so zen despite being in the thick of things. When you walk out and turn right you’ll eventually stumble upon the night markets and they’re SOOOO SOOO good (so well managed, food was always delicious and super safe!) and if you turn left you’ll get to Kata beach. Kata beach was the best one of those I went to (Patong, Rawai) cause it was very safe with lots of young families and parts of the water are sections off with flags show where to swim. Fish in the water too might nibble at you, at least it means the waters nice and clean haha!

Transport: They have a shuttle to the beach, an airport shuttle and they’ll help organise a taxi for you and put it on the deposit.

Oh, on that, yes bring $3,000 baht for EACH room in cash. There are atms along the Main Street, it’s just a bit of a walk. Don’t for get this! And don’t be mean to the staff if you do!

Genuinely had such a lovely stay here, would happily stay again and recommend to friends...

The hotel in itself is very beautiful on the outside, has a really beautiful and modern design. The hotel is quite new so everything is fresh, but the rooms are very awkward in my opinion. The bathroom and the toilet are like two compartment rooms inside the room, looks like a public toilet of a mall inside a hotel room. When you get up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, you either walk in the darkness or you wake up your partner by turning on the light, cause as the toilet is in the room it shares the same roof and the light lights up everything, quite annoying, can’t understand why they did it like that.

The check in at the reception was really bad, we didn’t know that we had to give a deposit in cash of 3000 baht and as it was our last day in Thailand we did not want to withdraw that money, so we were basically forced to leave either our passports to the reception or a copy of our credit card. It’s crazy that a modern hotel like this doesn’t have a system that can just reserve the deposit amount from your credit card and return it once you check out. Really frustrating! It also took a long time to check in as the reception was full of people and it seemed like a lot of other guests were experiencing some kind of issue with their bookings as well. The pool is very average and quite small for the size of the hotel. The breakfast was just ok, not so many options for western guests in my opinion. The staff at the reception lack professionalism, they don’t seem to be prepared to handle customers in all kinds of situation and they don’t fully understand English, so it’s hard to have a clear communication. The location is great, many nice restaurants close by and walking distance to Kata beach. Overall it has a good value for the money, but a lot of issues that shouldn’t be there, give an unpleasant experience that is enough to...

Unfortunately, our stay at this hotel was very disappointing.

Before we arrived, we sent an email asking for a mold-free room because of asthma problems. We didn’t get any reply. Later we found out that the hotel hadn’t even read our message within three days.

The first room we got smelled strongly of mold. It was damp, sticky, and not clean – there was hair on the floor and water drops on the ceiling. We asked to change rooms, but the next three rooms were just as bad. Only on a higher floor did we find a room that was a little better – the mold smell was weaker, but still there. There was also a bad smell coming from the drains in the shower and toilet sometimes. Even by the pool, we could smell mold from other rooms when people opened their balcony doors. This hotel clearly has a serious mold problem. The gym was also not good – the equipment was poor, the water dispenser was empty, and the dumbbells were wet from the humidity.

We complained, but only got vague answers. Even though the room was expensive, nothing was really done. At checkout, we were offered a discount for the hotel restaurant, but the senior staff member (Ms. Tikky) knew we had to leave soon for our airport transfer, so we couldn’t even use it.

This was also the only hotel (out of 8 we stayed at in Thailand) that asked for a 3,000 Baht cash deposit – credit cards were not accepted. That was very inconvenient, especially at the end of our trip where needed our last money.

The only good thing was the great breakfast, and all of the staff were friendly and helpful – except for the senior staff member...