Aleenta Hua Hin - Pranburi Resort & Spa — Hotel in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province

I booked a short stay at Aleenta Hua Hin to check out this property and my quick takeaway is that unless someone highly values having a sea view, this hotel is poor value. I would not recommend this property, in my opinion it does not belong in the Small Luxury Hotel (SLH) chain because there was nothing luxury about it except the price tag. I would probably rate it in the bottom 5% of all hotels I have stayed before and that’s even being generous.

Aleenta Hua Hin is actually in Pranburi, a quiet suburb about 30 minutes south of Hua Hin. I like the area, however the set up of Aleenta’s resort is awful. There are two small separate buildings about 300 meters apart so it’s almost as if one hotel bought another and they illogically decided to make it one, which makes no sense because there are a bunch of miscellaneous buildings in between. The main pool was in the other building than the one where we were staying so if we had wanted to go to the pool it would not have been convenient to say the least, especially not in swimming gear. Anyway, the strong point of Aleenta is that it is on the beach side of the road so unlike many other hotels in the area, there is no need to cross the road to access the beach, and that stretch of beach was actually quite nice.

Aleenta advertises the entry level room as 45 sqm but they must have been counting the outdoor space upstairs on the roof of our room because the room itself was small - there was only space for one night table on one side of the bed. There was not a single shred of luxury in this room, for example air conditioning was not central, fairly low ceilings, heck there was not even a TV in the room and the bed did not have a headboard either – just the mattress against the wall. Last but not least, the faucet handles were clunky and one of them fell apart when turning on the water. Bottom line, there is no chance this hotel should qualify for the SLH chain because nothing was luxury. The only positive I could find about the room is that it had direct sea views as our room was pretty much right above the beach, while many other hotels in the area do not have views.

I did not interact with staff very much during our stay so I cannot comment extensively about service except for a few negatives. I needed to contact the hotel in advance and e-mailed them twice at the address shown on their website and never got an answer. Once at the hotel we were informed that we could not go to breakfast whenever we wanted: we had to book a table at a specific time for social distancing reasons. Then once we were in the restaurant, we realized there was nothing about social distancing and it was all pure BS: the restaurant only had 9 tables and was packed for breakfast at 8am – they had not removed tables to create more space since covid, guests hardly had any space to move between tables. When we arrived at the time I scheduled there was only one table left and they were not checking anything regarding when guests pre-booked and they had to turn back some other arriving guests after us. I guess they simply trusted that guests would go to the restaurant when they said they would, which was not a correct assumption. This hotel is rigid in breakfast appointments as a result of the flaws in their venue, possibly because that restaurant was never designed to accommodate guests in the second (separate) building.

Breakfast could have been the one redeeming element for this hotel to claim being luxury, but unfortunately it was not the case. The menu was not bad although a bit limited, and they found the way to irritate by asking for an extra charge if I wanted an ice latté. True luxury hotels do not attempt to nickel & dime guests for a drink.

Bottom line, I have stayed at various properties near Hua Hin and in my opinion Aleenta is not competitive with others where I have stayed and cannot justify the price premium they ask for so I cannot...

Finding Aleenta Hua Hin on the Entertainer app was exciting. Shortly after booking a 3 day 2 night stay (2nd night complimentary with the app), we arrived at the resort after a 30-35 min Grab ride from town (which costed us around 400 THB).

The checking in process was easy, the staff were friendly as Thai people mostly are, and we were shown to our room. We stayed in Residence 4 at the main wing (hotel has another Frangipani wing accessible via their complimentary tuk tuk shuttle), and the view was heavenly.

The best thing about Aleenta was the ease of communication, as you can just instant message them through the "Line" app, a Whatsapp equivalent. We booked our tuk tuk rides, asked questions like where the in room dining menu is, etc. Response was fast!

The let down started when we asked if our room included breakfast. This, as we knew that our booking did not include breakfast. We asked because the receptionist had told us the breakfast timings, and where we could have our breakfast.

The reply on the Line chat said, "Yes, your room comes with breakfasts for 2."

Happy but cautious, we checked the invoice that was given to us ahead of our stay, and found that it does state that our stay comes with 2 breakfasts, even if our email trail with reservations specified that it did not. We took the invoice as final as it was the last communication we had with reservations and after confirming it with resort staff on Line.

Elated, we decided to take the ultimate upgrade package at THB 3000++ per person, where we would get to order unlimited drinks from the resort's All Inclusive menu, order unlimited food for lunch & dinner, a 2-hour spa treatment, and everything from the minibar (except for spirits). Note that we chose the non-alcoholic package, which meant, according to the receptionist, we would not be able to order anything alcoholic from the menus which was fine by us. The package also required an extra 400 THB per person if our room package did not come with breakfast. Confirming with the receptionist again that our room package does come with breakfast, we were not charged extra.

The next day came, we had a great breakfast consisting of homemade bread & butter. The selection was small, but nothing made us happier than homemade bread & butter in addition to the one hot breakfast item that they prepared from the kitchen.

We went for a spa that we could customise, and had an amazing lunch. The Restaurant was a very hot due to weather and no air conditioning but it was fine. In the evening we went to the pool, and had fruit juices and pizza, preceeded by dinner of an amazing bowl of Tom Kha. We ordered some of the same things from earlier on in the day, but the portions were 3x larger at night! We could not finish anything.

The next morning, wanting to have breakfast. We were greeted by a staff that said, our room does not come with breakfast, and that we would have to pay 350 THB per person if we wanted to have breakfast. Puzzled, we showed the Line chat, and our invoice.

The staff served us coffee while we waited for answers to our confusion. We went to the receptionist who quickly scrolled down through our email correspondence, and told us no, our room does not come with breakfast, and that it only does for one night only.

This was weird & disappointing, as it leaves a bad taste in our mouth the day we are due to leave the resort and the country. We feel that this was an oversight by hotel staff, who only realised their mistake after the fact.

We feel that whatever is stated in our invoice should be honoured, especially after we have confirmed multiple times.

As a member of the small luxury hotels of the world, we were expecting the resort to be more accommodating. Otherwise, the stay would have...

Overall we had an amazing stay in Aleenta Hua Hin.

Quick trip to celebrate our anniversary and we had a wonderful time. We booked and stayed in the beachfront pool access suite. It was spacious and beautifully laid out room. We loved having the pool in front of our balcony. It was separate from the main hotel you can either call a hotel buggy or walk the 500m.

Both of us were vegan and we were worried about the food options. We emailed and they were able to create amazing vegan breakfast for us including the pastries and bread every morning and they allowed us to order from a separate vegan lunch and dinner menu as their breakfast menu did not have many savoury vegan options.

I hope they enhance their breakfast menu to include more local vegan options such as vegan pad Thai and vegan curry

We also had a dinner at the restaurant and some of the items from the vegan menu were not available but the chef was able to create local vegan dishes for us. We always loved their mango sticky rice

We also did a day trip with them to see the elephants in the national park which was efficiently organised.

We also organised our transport from Bangkok international airport via the hotel. When we arrived it was late and we could not find the driver there are many gates and eventually found the driver in another gate. The drive was 4 hours long but they had cold water and juices available for the ride. The pilot seats were very comfortable and we were able to recline and have a good nap. On the way back to the airport we also had two additional students riding with us. We wouldn’t have mind this if we were asked or informed ahead as we booked and paid for private transfer to the airport.

Please note if you directly book your hotel through aleenta website and not the Hilton website then they do not recognise your status. No room upgrade etc for Hilton gold members

Bird from the front reception always was very attentive and ensured all our request was well taken care of and made sure our vegan meal was always catered for even for the day excursion and the afternoon tea we had by the pool side. She made our stay extra special.

Overall we had a wonderful stay at the resort and we would definitely...