Holiday Inn Resort Phuket Karon Beach by IHG — Hotel in Karon

Hotel Review

We are staying 20 nights at this lovely hotel. We leave this week, having recovered from my surgery. It's been the perfect place to recuperate: the amenities, staff, service and prices have been great! They upgraded us to a suite (Gold IGH members) with plunge pool for our entire stay and we have been so grateful for the extra space. If we ever needed anything fixed or supplied... everything has been done promptly and happily.

BEST THINGS; *Meals are well presented, good value and safe to eat/drink. *Cocktail hour: free appetisers and games... lol. *Breakfast is well presented and a very good variety, overall. Eggs cooked fresh to liking. Various hot and cold stations. Nice setting. Main pool area is a beautiful setting, surrounded by lovely gardens and daybeds. (Plenty of umbrellas and beds avail.) Food and cocktail service is fairly quick. *Our room is always cleaned well, with plenty of linen and water provided. Very generous with supplies. Great air-con and storage. *Senerenity Spa... is lovely. A very inviting and relaxing place, good prices, service & massages! The internet service is excellent. No drop outs at all! My partner had many online work meetings each day. A handy desk in the room (and office chair provided to him!) *Our plunge pool was always checked daily for cleanliness levels. Reception always happy to assist 24/7! I was very sick one night 4am (eating outside hotel). They immediately called a very good doctor and did regular checks on me. They assisted getting us drivers and negotiating prices for us. The tour and snack shop here is very handy! *Location close to beach and other little shops.

Best Staff; Dain (Restaurant manager). He should be the chief executive manager! His English is great, very professional, helpful, friendly, understands every section of this hotel and gets things done! Outstanding service Dain! Qis. (Reception). Always happy, smiling and very helpful. Good English. Always ensuring we had things we needed. You're an angel! Aree (Serenity Spa). Great skills and lovely person. Very polite and obliging. The best massages I've ever had! Abigail (Office). Always friendly, checking on our welfare, great English speaking and a lovely person. Everybody else! A big thank you for your kind and friendly help.

Suggestions; After staying 20 nights, we noticed some adjustments needed; Need little gates each end of the suite decks. We had people walk through our private area several times, adjoining other pathways. Pool edges need cleaning and some broken tiles need fixing. Need signs on walls to Serenity Spa, Pool toilets and Champions bar. Confusing corridors without signs! Breakfast. Need muesli/granola. Remove the soggy french toast. We saw very few people wanting to eat it. Suggest you replace that with waffles, bagels or larger muffins. Get real bacon too. (Not just chicken bacon.) Occasionally the bathroom has a methane smell (typical in humid countries). Suggest cleaners pour some bleach down the floor drains?

Overall we thoroughly recommend this hotel! Thanks again for making our stay so enjoyable. Gerry...

we organized a few days break in Phuket for our adult children and their children and ourselves to meet after a difficult year where my son received treatment for cancer. we chose to stay at this particular Novotel in Phuket because of the pictures which showed a picture of a swimming pol with a great water slide. the other pictures of the rooms also appealed to us. on arrival our rooms were not ready except for the family room which was fantastic, well layout and with a great outlook to a pool. our small grandchildren enjoyed the toys in the room and the little treasure hunt on arrival. thank you for that! it is a good idea! the other 3 double rooms were not ready when our separate groups arrived form midday to 3pm but we were told that we would all be upgraded to duluxe room, having paid for superior rooms. we were given rooms 2102, 2106 and 2107. the rooms were situated at the edge of the resort and consequently the main road was just behind the boundary of the resort about 1 metre from the bedroom double window (which were there to stop the outside noise of the main road ) so consequently you could not use the verandah as there was no outlook but a wall right in front of the verandah, and the noise of the road made that impossible anyway to have the sliding windows opened. Another consequence of the position of the rooms was that they at very dark, no natural light ever reaches the rooms, which also leads to the rooms very damp. the smell of old socks which comes when fabric never gets a chance to dry properly ever, was pungent when we got into the rooms at the first place and we should have asked to change rooms at that point but we did not as we had been waiting outside for over 2 hours prior to our rooms being ready and we wanted to cool down in the pool. we then discovered that the base of the bed was actually mouldy and the pillows were damp and horribly smelly but for the sake of making the family reunion work for us, we did not complain nor made a fuss to change rooms. the family room was very good and we all spent a lot of time in that room. so to keep this report brief I would say the resort was very good on many fronts, the restaurants were very good and the food well prepared. the front desk staff were kind and helpful and the pools were lots of fun. overall the hotel is well run and maintained and clean but those rooms should never be given to paying guests. the clothes in my luggage were still damp on arrival back home and smelt of old socks as did the rooms. even my reading book was limp with moisture... and it was not from the tropical humidity as the family room did not have the same result. the only way we found to make the room vaguely liveable was to lower the temperature to the point where it was freezing in it so that we could no longer smell the dampness in it. very unpleasant indeed! we did mention all that to the reception desk on...

Stayed here for 3 nights in Jan 2024 - family of 4 with 2 kids. Overall the hotel is average with some good and some not so good things going for it. It's a relatively old hotel that has been through a few name changes and while a lot of the areas have been renovated, there are quite a few that need more up-keep.

THE GOOD

The staff were very courteous, enthusiastic and helpful. 5/5 to them. Whether that be the reception, the buffet breakfast, room service or staff looking after the hotel facilities (e.g. pools, kids play area etc), everyone greeted you with a smile and was very pleasant to deal with.

The other thing that impressed was activities for kids and the play-room. The play-room was of a good size with plenty to keep kids of all ages busy. There was everything from a ball pit to gaming consoles, arcade games, board games and everything in between. Plus there were other games outside near the pool e.g. archery, darts, Jenga etc. In addition to that there were plenty of scheduled activities in the play-room and the pool area which very well coordinated by the staff.

THE OK

The buffet breakfast was average. There were a few options, but the quality could be better. More importantly for all 3 days the breakfast options were exactly the same. Some variety would have been appreciated.

The room and the balcony were decent sized (1 King 1 Bunk family suite). But the floor of the room seemed dated and required a fresh coat of polish. Also more storage options would have been better.

THE BAD

The pools were very un-inviting. The hotel has 3 pools - none of them connected to each other in any way. In fact the kids' pool is on a different level. All that is fine, but the 2 pools barring the kids' pool had a lot of debris in them and even the colour of the water didn't look clean. Some serious work required there. The kids' pool was relatively clean, but you can't really swim in it as it is so shallow. More importantly, that one needed some maintenance around the tiling and grouting on the floor of the pool. One of the steel steps used to come of the kids' pool was not fitted properly and even wobbled under the weight of my 2 year old.

The worst part was an unwanted feature in the room. There was a glass wall separating the bathroom from the bedroom. Whilst some part of the wall was frosted, a major portion wasn't. More than enough that if some was having a shower or sitting on the toilet seat doing their business, you could see them clearly from the bedroom (see photo attached). That could be a major problem if the room isn't being shared by close family or with...