Thavorn Beach Village Resort & Spa — Hotel in Kamala

Do not book this hotel if you care about efficiency.

I will start with the positives about this hotel. It is very beautiful as shown in the pictures and the complimentary breakfast buffet was amazing with a large variety of options (international food, salad bar, fruits, drinks). The staff was also pretty nice and helpful.

Now onto the negatives, which are the reasons why I would never book this hotel again.

MOST IMPORTANT: Terrible room access due to use of cable car If your room is on an upper floor, they don’t have an elevator to go up to the room and instead you have to take a long cable car. The cable car itself is extremely slow and takes about 30 seconds to go from one floor to another, and one of the cable cars wasn’t working while we were there. This means that if the cable car is going up to another floor the entire process of waiting can take around 15+ minutes. In addition, the one working cable car broke down while we were there and so we had to wait 20 minutes outside in the heat for them to bring a tuktuk for us to go up to our room. The cable car hours are also only 7 am - 11 pm so to access your room outside of those hours you have to wait for them to send a car up from the lobby, which again can take up to 15-20 minutes.

Room access is a pretty important issue since we would have to allocate like 20-30 minutes for the process of going up to and from the room due to waiting for the cable car.

CHECK OUT: The entire process of checkout was extremely slow. Our checkout time was 12 pm, we called them at 10:30 am to send a car for our luggage and that we would be ready in 20 minutes. They said to call back then, we called them at 10:50 when we were ready to leave and they said they would call the car up but we ended up waiting another 20 minutes with still no car in sight. After calling them repeatedly, they finally sent a car up at 12:20 causing a long delay. By the time we got down to the lobby, it was 12:30 and then we had to cancel our ride to the airport because they said they needed 10 minutes to check the room which again we were not informed about beforehand.

ROOMS: We specifically ordered a triple bed room with 3 individual single beds, and instead received a single bed and a king bed. This wasn’t a huge deal but it was still upsetting to have not gotten what we paid for.

AMENITIES: Everything at this hotel is expensive and overpriced. At the hotel restaurant, a bottle of water costs like $10 USD so you have to bring your own water everywhere, although they give 4 complimentary bottles of water per day upon request. We booked this hotel because the spa seemed great, but all of the spa treatments are priced at expensive Western prices that are 1000 baht and above when the same treatments are around 300-500 baht outside the hotel.

BEACH: Do not book this hotel for its beach access. The beach and water are covered in rocks so there’s not much place to sit and you can’t even swim, let alone snorkeling.

Overall, it wasn’t terrible but the various efficiency issues we faced with the cable car made it extremely hard to plan anything in our day and definitely caused issues during our trip that I would not expect from a 5 star hotel. Please be aware of this before you decide...

We visited the resort as part of my mum's 50th birthday celebrations, and it was an absolutely stunning resort! We cannot fault how pretty, clean and aesthetic the resort looked, particularly the pool area which we found to be the highlight of the resort's layout. We stayed at the resort for nearly 2 weeks, so we thoroughly enjoyed our stay however there were a few downfalls which we wanted to share in this review, as although we did enjoy the holiday and the location, unfortunately the room service was terrible. The bedsheets were not properly cleaned, and on one occasion it seemed that the cleaning staff had attempted to 'hide' a stain by placing one of our items of clothing over it (this item of clothing was not previously on the bed, so it seemed intentional). On multiple days, we would have to call reception to tell them that the cleaning staff had either not filled up our toilet roll, replaced the dirty towels with new ones, had failed to clean our rooms (despite hanging the 'please clean' sign on the outside of our door, and we would be out all day from 9am-4pm), and just general maintenance was not consistent by the cleaning staff, which is a HUGE shame because otherwise the resort itself is stunning. We felt that this was a big problem during our stay, especially since this resort is a 5 star location and is meant to be LUXURY, you expect a high level of professionalism and cleanliness - we should't need to call reception to tell them what the cleaning staff need to do, which was quite annoying during our trip. However, we would like to give a massive thank you to Jan who we met at the Crocodile bar in the resort, she was so helpful and kind - she even went out of her way to make sure there were potato smiley faces for my sister, at breakfast time, which we really did appreciate so thank you! We enjoyed the animal petting zoo that is in the resort, and the beach setting is stunning. We would suggest though the hotel should make more options available for free tea/ coffees during the day, even if we only have all inclusive at breakfast, I think it's a bit cheeky to get people to pay for tea/coffee throughout the day - especially at such expensive prices! I also think would be great to see more activities at night time at the resort - like some sort of evening entertainment, fireshow on the beach - something fun like that was missing from the resort. I also found that there was not many places to eat or chill at in the resort besides the main restaurant (where breakfast and lunch was) and the crocodile bar, which did make it a bit boring near the end of the trip because there weren't many options, compared to other resorts I've visited in Europe etc. I also think they need to make the bar area bigger, maybe make it a separate room altogether, because again there is limited seating and feels quite boring when it's the same old seating/ venue for every meal - breakfast, lunch, dinner. Despite this, it was a great resort and we did enjoy the scenery and general atmosphere but unfortunately the cleaning in the bedroom, and limited eating options and lack of evening entertainment, was a bit...

I wish I had been told certain things about this hotel which would have helped me make a better decision—which is to not stay here.

Why is there not enough discussion of the cable car? This is perhaps the most significant issue with this hotel. The rooms at this resort all sit on a large hillside, and to get to them you have to take a cable car up to your designated level (6 total). There are 2, except during my 4-night stay only 1 was working, and it is incredibly old and moves excruciatingly slow. I also question its safety due to its age and how high above the ground it is.

Since the cable car could (and usually does) take a while to come to your floor after you call it, plus the length of the ride itself, you are looking at up to 10-15 minutes of commute. Just to leave and get to your room. We ended up having to constantly budget extra time for the cable car and minimize our number of trips to and from our room. Good luck if you forget something or are in a hurry—to catch a flight, a tour bus, or rideshare for example.

One time, the 1 remaining cable car went into maintenance and we were forced to wait outside over 20 minutes for a car to drive us to our room, while we were hot and exhausted from a tour we had just finished that day.

Aside from this, there are plenty of other issues. The restaurants, spa, and bar are incredibly overpriced—charging Western prices while anywhere you go outside the resort has the same thing for a fraction of the cost.

The lagoon pool itself looks stunning in photos, but was underwhelming in person. It’s the same depth all around (~5 feet), there is no hot tub, and overall not much to do after 5 minutes of being inside the water.

We never went to the beach, since it was very rocky and not even pleasant to look at. The rooms are old and have a sign in the bathroom telling you to not be afraid of lizards in the room as they are “beneficial” to you. The bed was also hard—I don’t think I ever got a night of full, deep sleep.

Furthermore, even through check out there were issues. We called well in advance of when we wanted to leave so a car could come pick up our luggage and take us down. Even still there were multiple back and forths to get the car to come, and by now we were behind schedule. Next, we were never told that the checkout process involved a 10 minute check until we were already at the desk. We had already booked a ride to the airport and had to cancel it while they performed the check, and we ended up having to wait another 30+ minutes for a ride. All of this led us to be so late that we very nearly missed our flight.

All in all I found this resort to be incredibly inefficient and quite in need of renovation. I honestly wish we had booked a place further in town with smaller rooms and more modern accommodations even if it meant we were further from the beach.

Added one star because the breakfast was wonderful, and the one highlight of my stay. So many fresh options and all were delicious. Beyond the basics, they had everything from a noodle soup station to pad thai/curries (both vegetarian and non-vegetarian versions) to thai iced...