Mai Samui — Hotel in Ko Samui

The hotel disappointed us across the board. In our eyes, this is a former 5* hotel that has been consistently run down and is now performing significantly worse than other 2* or 3* hotels we have visited this holiday. The only positive points are the generous room size, the separation of toilet and shower and a spacious balcony with outdoor bathtub. The complex itself is also very nicely laid out, but is clearly getting on in years. We were able to check in at 12 noon, there are two bottles of fresh water every day and the staff is always friendly and helpful. There are sports facilities, such as kayaking and badminton, and the buffet seems fine at first glance. And that's where we come to the negative aspects, which unfortunately totally spoiled our holiday finale, where we wanted to treat ourselves to something with the 5* star hotel. The buffet was nothing special for 5* stars and only covered the basics of a breakfast buffet. In addition, the waffles were often dry and crumbly, as were the "cinnamon buns", which had the consistency of cardboard and were apparently a few days old. Arriving at the room, the first look seemed promising but on closer inspection we noticed the shortcomings. We have several large house spiders and cobwebs in the corners of the room. The corners are dirty, if you move the bedside cabinet just a little bit, you will also see dirt and when I opened the bathroom cabinets, you could see that they had not been cleaned for a long time (see pictures). The balcony was unfortunately not much better. The wood on the railing and on the roof was splintery and pieces of wood fell into the bathtub from time to time. The whole balcony was full of dirt and bird poop and we had to clean the bathtub thoroughly ourselves to be able to use it at all. The pillows were stained and after a heavy rain the water didn't run off and the room service only pulled off the seating outside but left everything like that (see pictures). In the room itself the wifi did not work most of the time, the TV did not receive normal channels nor was it a SmartTV and the room cards did not work several times either. The air conditioning is very loud even on the lowest setting and is aimed directly at the bed so that we already had a sore throat after two nights. However, you can't leave it off because the doors to the balcony don't close completely and it gets very warm at night. The complex itself is divided into two parts and both have a large pool. One seems to have a sandy bottom and in the front area there is a large pool and a children's pool. During our stay, the swimming areas in the front part seemed to be cleaned all the time, but still there were leaves and grass floating everywhere on the water and lying on the pool floor. The metal seating is rusted and there are broken tiles all over the poolside and entryways. There are only loungers on the beach and not directly by the pool, where there are cigarette butts, glasses from the night before and some of the plastic loungers are broken. The only thing I can say about the service is that everyone is friendly and always seems to be trying. However, there is no introduction at check-in when and where breakfast is, what the check-in and check-out times are or what the hotel has to offer. There is also no information sheet in the rooms. In addition, there is no pick-up from the pier, here there is a shuttle, but after several requests in advance, only a standardised answer is sent here and no response to my questions. Here I would recommend taking a Lomprayah shuttle for 150 THB per person and not a local taxi for 800 THB as suggested by the hotel. The hotel is also very remote and to get into town you need a scooter, which was offered to us by the hotel for 350 THB per day, which we kindly declined and preferred to walk into town to rent a scooter for a better price. At one time the hotel seemed like it might have been 5*, but now it is definitely not up to scratch. Actually, I would like to end...

Resort We stayed at Mai Samui for one week. The facility was nice, but only if you don’t look too closely. For example: a lot of areas have wooden decks with rotten or loose planks, one time I stepped clean through one of the planks with my foot and ended op topside in the bushes. There were other signs too that indicated the place was old and in need of maintenance. The pool was nice though, so was the beach area.

Staff The staff was friendly, but the resort was clearly understaffed. Most of the crew were interns from 15 to 20 years old, including reception employees, concierges and housekeepers. We have not seen many people over the age of 25 while we were there. We have also not seen a manager or someone clearly in charge. The staff spoke terrible english and didn’t understand us most of the time, but they pretended to anyway, which led to frequent misunderstandings. In conclusion the staff was hardworking and nice, but lacking leadership, experience and numbers. Also: the free airport shuttle had to be booked three days in advance all of a sudden, they didn’t explain further. We ended up having to pay 800 thb for a taxi.

Room The room we were given at first looked nice, but was right next to an active building site with unbearable noise. After some tiresome interactions with staff (friendly, but language barrier) and some phone calls to a manager, who did exist apparently, we did get a nicer room with a view of the sea. Things quickly went downhill though, here’s a list:

card reader in the wall immediately fell down. Two lights were not working, although sometimes they flickered. The water from the tap was dark brown at first. Openings between windows and doors leading to drafts and the doors slamming whenever there was some wind outside. The airconditioning shreeked at you when it was running. Outside bath was not watertight and couldn’t be used. The toilet barely flushed. The toilet bubbled at intervals followed by the most putrid smell filling the room. The shower sneezed water at you at either scalding hot or freezing cold temperatures. One night we didn’t get hot water at all, when we called reception and explained, she just kept asking if we wanted tea delivered to our room. The room was cleaned okay, but not all items were properly restocked. The towels sometimes smelled like fuel. We did get free drinking water daily.

Breakfast Breakfast was okay, but the staff couldn’t keep up and items were constantly out of stock, including cutlery. They also blasted copyright-free xylophone versions of popular music, which nearly drove us insane.

Restaurant The restaurant is expensive and not very good compared to options nearby. 50m over via the beach there is a local restaurant that is cheap and nice.

Other guests While there were some families, we got the impression that most guests were here to drink and party. That’s fine but be aware of this when considering.

Conclusion This is not a four star resort, it is somewhere in between two and three stars as it stands. Will give three stars because of beautiful location. Would...

This resort is very impressive, traditional and spacious, the large pool is amazing and the 2 restaurants are set out well.|We stayed in a pool access room which was amazing with its giant stone bathing area. Luckily, we were in the section close to the ocean so our room had steps into the large pool, we would have been disappointed if we were in a room 2 or 3 down where their pool was only waist deep.|One very good service was the free shuttle bus to town where the drivers were very helpful.|Breakfast is very good all though the same every day and all our room service meals were also good.|The resort is split into 2 sections with guests telling us that the kids pool in the section furthermost from the ocean has a tinge of green and not inviting, also a few of the rooms are not clean to a point one guest showed us photos of mould in their sinks.|The resort has so much potential and may once have been very good to stay at but sadly we were very disappointed in the attitude of most of the staff, not that they were rude just none engaging or even interested in helping guests, every morning at breakfast we would have to ask for something that’s missing whether it be a knife or fork or simply a glass, very frustrating when members of staff would stand next to the empty cutely section when they only had one simple job to do and stand there as if everything is ok. My wife would not go to breakfast after the 3rd day due to the sad atmosphere.|Back in the room the towels would be taken but not replaced, some days room service plates would sit at the door all day.||The poor quality of the staff flowed into the so-called pool bar area which was only open from 12 noon till 6pm where every 20 minutes or so you would have to ask for the music to be turned back on which sadly, we gave up on and sat in silence most of the time making the resort have no atmosphere at all. There was no cocktails available, the beers weren’t cold and a very poor selection of alcoholic beverages available.|The BBQ has not been fired up for approx. 2 years.|There was no water sport equipment, no guest activities and after 6pm the place turned into a morgue||In the 2 weeks we stayed, I think I witnessed a handful of guests eating in the restaurants as nobody wanted to stay around.|Very frustratingly it seems an easy fix: As the staff obviously have had next to no training (and many are not Thai) replace the manager with somebody that has any sort of drive, replace most of the staff and train them, spend a bit of money to put lighting on the tiny beach area, play some music, have activities, traditional dancing etc. and actually engage with the guests hopefully later than 6pm.||A very good place to stay if you don’t want to meet people, very little noise or activity or if you just want to stay in your...