The Seaes Hotel & Resort, Jeju — Hotel in Seogwipo-si

Overlooking the ocean, this beautiful hotel is quaint, cozy, and serene. It's perfect for those who hope to stay away from the massive resorts that house literally thousands of guests, with many many children running around wild and splashing around in the pool until late at night. It is very quiet, with are only 29 rooms, so if privacy is your concern, this is it. ||||Amenities are somewhat lacking—no pool, only 1 restaurant that is fully open from morning to evening (there was one cafe that was open from 12-5pm catering to travelers on the Olle trail), and 1 bar/cafe that closed at 10pm. But we knew this at the time of booking, so this wasn't our main issue. ||||Our main issue with this place is service. For the price tag (up to par with the other 5-star places including Shilla, Lotte, and Kensington), the service we received during our stay was pretty disappointing (Except for one staff member who had apparently just migrated from Seoul to work at Seaes--she was absolutely lovely). They were not quite rude, but not terribly friendly either. It was quite a contrast from when we had stayed at Kensington just a few months before, and when we visited Shilla to grab dinner in the same trip. For example, our experience during breakfast in particular was quite dismal. ||||For breakfast, they serve you a main dish (a choice of Korean or American) but have available a small breakfast buffet area with fruit, toast, salad, and boiled eggs. Breakfast is from 7 to 10—we got there at 9am and the buffet was nearly empty, with most of the food gone. The worst part was they made no attempt to refill the buffet even though there was still an hour left until breakfast was over. Even when we asked specifically for some items to be refilled, they would merely nod and smile as if they understood, then turn around and not do so or even follow up to tell us that they are out of such items. There were only two staff members manning the breakfast area, and they were all busy serving the main dishes, with not much other interaction with guests. They never came around to refill our waters, ask how the food was or if we need anything else... ||||It just seems like the hotel is severely understaffed and does not properly train the employees that it has hired. Each one is just busy doing multiple people's jobs and does not seem to have much time to just observe and survey the guests' needs and meet them accordingly. The staff were just not that attentive. You have to constantly ask that things be done, like refilling water, cleaning up tables with finished drinks so you can sit, etc. For me, it's the subtle things that set apart 5-star luxury hotels from the others, and they just couldn't get there. ||||We loved the physical property, it's such a shame that the lacking service ruined our experience. I doubt we will return... hopefully the hotel takes our feedback and...

By far the biggest issue was the bed wooden bezel which was a permanent source of pain and also even made impossible to sit on a bed side. Clearly other complained too as they added some rubber band to the corners — instead of replacing the bed frames! Other issues: very thin single sheet toilet paper, entrance light sensor with a timeout of exactly 2s, right hand side lamp not working, mosquitos even if windows never open and the mosquito repellent device was on (but probably did not had the liquid replaced in ages), having to hear a power engine (likely pump?) working about 50% of time, close enough to feel the vibration, aged furniture (like 30 years oldish), we even had 10-15 ants crawling in the middle of the room, air conditioning unit was pushing air straight on the bed and did not had any setting to lower the power. It was either hot without it or freezing cold with it, luckily for us outside was cold so we could let the window open. It was impossible to control the lights from the bed, not the there were too many if them. Also remember that bed bezel... guess what happens when you need to visit the loo in the dark... I bet you can recognise the guests by their bruises on their legs.||||Not important for us but worth mentioning that the TV was a non smart 32” one and apparently we were not able to find any non premium channels to watch. At previous accommodation which had unobstructed sea view we had a 55” 4K HDR top-range smart one and that one costed half of the price of this. Internet connection was 40mbps using outdated wifi security (phone warned), which is really weird as WPA2 was introduced 15 years ago.||||Breakfast was included but when we sit we were presented with 3 options: two seafood dishes and one pork-kimchi with a price of 28.000, which I believe were not included in the buffet. The included buffet did not had any cooked food but it had decent homemade yogurt, one fruit (pineapple — good), some salads with fans near them, so powerful that picking the leaves without loosing them was a funny experience. They included salmon in sashimi slices which was still frozen-glued together. I wonder what muslims or jews would have picked out of the three hot dishes.||||I would clearly recommend visiting this place for a coffee/drink at their bar as you could also have a walk that would allow your to see the amazing landscape and gardening. This would allow you to enjoy the best for almost no costs. After spending two weeks in Korea in various regions places I could say that this place is like 2-2.5x more expensive...

Came to this place with too high expectations. First of all I do not undersand how they got a 5 star rating, as the hotel does not have a swimming pool, nor a gym and the rooms are VERY small. We were two people with 2 normal suitacases which we did not have space to even store. We asked if it would be possible to PURCHASE an upgraded room, but they told us that the hotel was full. We checked online after and there were rooms available, but just out of principle we did not go ahead with it. We just assumed that maybe we were not understood that we wanted to pay for it when we asked for the upgrade. ||||The scenery is very nice, but the place makes you feel like its abandoned (even though the hotel was full, according to them). This is probably because all the amenities are ridiculously expensive compared to the rest of the island / area. ||||We had dinner on the first night in the hotel restaurant and ended up paying 160,000 KRW (with 10% discount because we were staying in the hotel) - 2 people, took the menu and had 1 beer each. Indeed, the portions were massive and it had very good food, but considering a dinner is around 30,000 krw in the city, it kind of makes you feel ripped off. ||Coffee in the hotel cafe is also ridiculously expensive. 18,000 krw (approx 14 euros) for a cappuccino and double espresso is even more expensive than what you get at Cafe du Paris in Monaco.... the quality is good, but again it makes you feel ripped off. ||||The SPA does not provide you with bath robes, nor slippers. Considering it was raining on the day we went to the spa, there was no way to walk from the room in the slippers and robes provided in the room through the hotel (not to mention that walking in your bathrobe in the hotel is rude towards other guests).||||Overall the place was dissapointing. We could have gone to one of the big chain hotels around, but we wanted to get an authentic experience and judging by the pictures online, this place seemed to offer it. We took the risk, as it was rated 5*, but we lost the bet. ||||Lastly, the staff was nice and they do speak English to certain extent (some more than others). However, there was one weird incident when a large group of tourists came to the hotel and we were basically asked to leave the courtyard, so they can take their picture all together, which I find a bit rude, considering that we were also guests in the hotel. We would have done it either way, but the fact that someone came and asked us to leave as soon as the group came in is unacceptable. ||||VERY...