Melia Phuket Mai Khao — Hotel in Mai Khao

The intention of our stay was remote working in paradise with perfect conditions for focussed work while having excellent service and a pleasant and healthy overall experience. Our experience was beyond and above.

We have been at the newly opened Melia Mai Khao Resort for eight nights just a few days after they opened the resort. We were expecting a lot of unfinished things and inexperienced hotel staff. But that was not the case at all. We have been treated the most pleasant way, as we are used to from Meliã hotels. The learning curve even the newest staff members have shown through our stay was extraordinary.

Guest experience in general: Overall, the guest experience team, led by the extraordinary Kuhn Dear and accompanied by Aon, made us feel unique and more than once did fulfil our wishes even before we knew them ourselves. Everyone comforted our wishes and got to know our habits and routines very fast. E.g., what kind of coffee we would have liked to refilled, how many bottles of water we usually need, and where we would like to sit at the restaurant or bar. And even for tours and excursions, they chose only the best for us, and we haven't been disappointed! Sed and Elle from the SPA provide amazing massages!

Rooms for Remote Work: Perfect place for remote working: the wifi is everywhere with a high 100Mbit+ speed. We tested two rooms (pool villas and the standard rooms). We personally preferred the standard rooms, as they are the same size and upper floor with a bit more light. We mostly don't use the villa pools anyway, and we prefer to see nature around us. The perfect room for us: P204! It has an endless view, next to the gym and the restaurants, quiet and perfect for working. At the moment, there is a desk and a chair missing what we need for working. But the friendly staff accommodated us with an additional small table from in-room dining. There are no power outlets outside at the terrace, so if you need power for your work equipment there, make sure to bring an extender or ask the staff. The restaurant offers some places where you have power outlets. Not so the bar (at the moment).

Gym: Brand new stylish gym with Aum from the recreating team taking care of every detail. For cardio: They have a smith machine, a treadmill, cross-trainer, sitting bike. One real bike machine would be good. For strength: dumbbells up to 20kg and two adjustable benches, a shoulder press. Some more machines, like a leg trainer, a barbell, and some more dumbbell weight (up to 30kg) would be good. Aum already told me that they take that into consideration. They have fresh fruit-infused water, water bottles, and chilled towels in the fridge for your availability. Very good!

Breakfast: Plenty of options to choose from the buffet and eggs as you like them. They have a lot of Thai food specials, fresh fruit, cereals and healthy choices, fresh-made smoothies, and soups, and everything looks clean, fresh, and tasty. The breakfast room is indoor, but you can also go outside and sit at the outdoor tables of the restaurant, which we prefer.

Food & Beverage Service: Eddy, our restaurant service go-to-guy, made sure that everything around us worked beyond expectations: whatever wish we had (and we tested a lot of "unusual" requests and in general), he and his team made it possible for us. Molly, Golf, Gack, Chat, Nook, all have provided us with excellent service! As you would expect for a 5 star hotel quite pricy, but worth every bite. The drinks are good, and the bar team provides you with a great atmosphere. The drinks, in general, are a bit too pricy if you are outside the happy hour (which unfortunately does not include wine or sparkling wine at the moment). If you want to have a change, head out to the Seaside restaurant right next to the resort. They have great local food for very reasonable money.

Housekeeping was very professional and careful, and Best showed exceptional strength by carrying our heavy luggage from one place to the other.

We wish the outstanding team the best for that brand new...

Hotel: We had the honour to be one of the first guests in this completely new developed hotel of the Meliá brand. We were aware when we booked, and were expecting a bumpy start, but still wanted to be part of that and see how a big hotel comes to life. However, our expectation were so much exceeded, as the operations were smooth from day one, and still even more improving everyday.

When we arrived, we where rather sceptical if we will ever feel cosy in that very stylisch and cool architecture of the resort and if the "soul" that Melià proposes to have in all ist properties will also be arrive in Mai Khao. Long story short, it did. At the end it was very hard to leave after spending 8 nights in that fantastic, brand new hotel, because the staff and management made us feel so welcome that we almost had the feeling as if we were really "living" there.

The hotel looks actually exactly like on the renderings, down to the very smallest details, except, that the plants and palms will make it even more beautiful, when they grow over the next months and years. Especially, the grey brick wall at the property borders hatches still out behind the greenery at too many places for my taste - nature will soon solve this. Although the property gets really narrow towards the beach, it turned out not to be any problem, as the whole area with the 60 metres pool, the cabanas, the bar and the restaurant is perfectly framing the beach and the sea at the end of the property, which hosts one of the most amazing sunsets that I have ever seen.

Rooms: Exactly like in the renderings, those rooms look like coming directly from the brain of a modern designer. Very beautiful rooms and terraces. We preferred the rooms without a pool, because pool rooms were ground floor with much less light on the terrace therefore. The roms in the first floor don't have a pool, but much more light and a big bath tub under the stars.

Location: Mai Khao is not the typical "Phuket". It is a very calm area close to the national park. The long white, natural beach invites for swimming, but as it is a protected zone, directly at the beach there are no sunbeds as far as the eye can see. So the hotel is a good starting point for excursions, where you get picked up in the morning, or it simply invites you to stay at the property and enjoy the relaxed area, the premium spa, or the nice atmosphere at the beautiful beach pool.

Restaurant: The atmosphere in the bar and in the restaurant is very nice, the architecture and the whole landscaping create bullet-proof instagrammable shots. The food is pricey and good, more Thai options would be nice from my point of view. Very good, that Melià with ist Spanish roots, still offers Gazpacho on ist menu and offers the Catalan smashed tomato for breakfast. Salads could have more/a stronger vinaigrette for my taste, but when I mentioned that, they directly solved that.

Service: Service was one of the biggest + from my point of view at this hotel. Not all of the staff were similarly good of course, but there are so many "top players" among them from my point of view, who think clearly far beyond their role and anticipate the guest perspective. Just to mention a few names, who really nailed it and made our stay so personal: Khun Eddy, Molly, Golf and Gack from the F&B team, and Khun Dear and Aon from the guest relations team. I can highly recommend also booking a massage or other treatment at the Yhi Spa with Sed and Elle.

Summary: My review sounds a bit like advertisement, because I am still very excited about our stay, but rest assured, that it was very hard for us to leave that place even - or especially - after 9 days at this place. This is not a classical beach resort, although it has a beach. But if you are looking to spend some relaxing days in luxury atmosphere, with a premium spa, with good restaurant and stylish bar, then this is definetely a place...

9 nights at the beginning of June '23. This is very close to being a 5 star review, I'll get to the reasons for the dropped star later but don't let them put you off, this truly is a 5 star resort. The staff are amazing, nothing is too much trouble, the food is great and the rooms are spacious, well equipped and, with the exception of a rather uncomfortable sofa, ideally suited to a self-indulgent holiday.

Location: Mai Khao is situated at the north of the island, on the mainland side of the airport. It’s quiet with a seemingly endless sandy beach although, at this time of the year, swimming is not a safe option. It’s well away from the main tourist resorts on the island and, while that helps with peace and quiet, it can feel isolated. Most tours don’t have pickups this far north, public transport is very limited and taxis soon mount-up (TIP: We got cabin fever on day two and hired a car. Car hire is very reasonable - a full day’s hire with airport drop-off is less than the cost of an airport transfer from the hotel. Driving in Phuket is not a problem and the freedom to go anywhere we wanted really made the holiday). The hotel is halfway between the resort centre to the north and the town to the south, a little under 2km away in each case and the hotel thoughtfully provides bicycles that are free for the first two hours to make this easier. The area clearly suffered badly during the pandemic and this leads to one of the small issues. Many hotels are still closed, some appear derelict and, as the hotels tend to maintain their own beachfronts, while the stretch in front of the Melia is pristine, it’s only a few steps in either direction to find yourself surrounded by washed-up rubbish in front of shuttered hotels (see attached photo).

Food and Drink: Food was all you would expect in a 5 star Thai resort. The menus in the two restaurants were predominantly tourist-friendly Thai with a few international and western options. All were exceptionally good and nicely presented. The all-important (for me anyway) breakfast buffet offered a good range of asian and western options. If your preference is for ‘The Full English’ you’ll probably not be thrilled - the bacon and sausages were not good examples but everything else was great - loads of fresh fruit and pastries with some interesting asian alternatives were just what I wanted to see. My only gripe was that during our 9 days, the menus never changed and there were no daily specials. We were on a full-board package and the lunch and dinner menus were the same. The result was that we’d been through nearly all the options in the first few days and had to start repeating. A little more variation and a daily feature that shows off the kitchen would be a big improvement. The wine and cocktail list was limited but adequate, drink prices in hotels in Thailand are always high so I’ll not single the Melia out, but be careful, it mounts up quickly - a single glass of wine or cocktail each every night led to a an eye-watering bar-bill at the end of the holiday.

Amenities: Well equipped gym (not that I got further than looking in the door), nice spa where we both enjoyed a relaxing massage and two really good pools. The smaller ‘Luna’ pool was right outside our room and largely ignored by guests which meant that, most days we could have it to ourselves. The main beachfront pool is long enough to have a proper workout. Both are kept spotless.

Overall, we had a great time and would not hesitate to go back or recommend it to others. Really, the only two things in the way of that fifth star in this review are the location amongst closed up neighbours (which the Melia can’t be blamed for of course) and the lack of variation over the stay in the...