Anantara Hua Hin Resort — Hotel in Prachuap Khiri Khan Province

General

We were not expecting a lot when coming to that resort in Hua Hin – mostly because the town of Hua Hin didn’t look interesting to us. Indeed, Hua Hin is very touristy and many big concrete buildings directly at the beach were built as hotels during the 90s and early 2000s. However, this hotel is a green, tropical oasis and gave us exactly what we were looking for: Relaxation and Anantara-style luxury in a tropical paradise.

Location

It is one of the first Anantara hotels in the world – maybe even the first? However, the grounds are simply breathtankingly beautiful. Nice thai-like buildings in an old, tropical garden. Beautiful pools and a nice pool bar. I highly recommend going for the Lagoon Room category (their “executive level” standard). The name-giving Lagoon, the lagoon pool and the whole lagoon area are simply the most atmospheric part of the hotel with a view over the large, old pond full of sea roses and abundancy of life.

On the other hand, I would not recommend this hotel, for a beach vacation. The resort is seafront, but the sea doesn’t have a beach (depending on the tide). There are other areas in Thailand which will cater much better for a beach holiday.

Facilities

Nice tropical restaurant directly at the shore with beautiful views over the sea. Highly recommended. Also, the breakfast restaurant is a perfect spot with outdoor seating in the tropical garden or directly at the main pool.

I would recommend to do a cooking class there. They have a outdoor pavilion directly at one of their ponds with a professional equipment and almost 1:1 support from their chefs from the restaurant.

The Anantara Spa, is – as typical for Anantara Hotels – one of the key assets of the resort. This Spa area is worth a visit – not only because of the nice service there, but also to see these impressive facilities, which reminded me on an ancient temple in the jungle.

How atmospheric is all of this, when the employees turn on the torches spread all over the grounds every evening!? We loved that!

New Years Eve

Well, we spend our New Years Eve 2021 at this resort. They made quite good advertisement for their “Tropical NYE celebration”. The anticipation was high – and exceeded by far. This was one of the best public NYE parties we had so far. It was a starry, tropical night, the hotel put so much effort in turning the central lane into a party and dining area. A big stage was erected between palmtrees, the food was simply perfect. Really nothing to complain about – tasty oysters, warm and cold food, specialties, thai, international, everything of highest quality. To be honest, we were not expecting this, as we had Christmas dinner buffet before in another popular 5-star hotel in Thailandjd which was only good – but by far not perfect.

2021 – the second “corona year”… it felt so good to have finally such a nice evening with live music, food and people. Additionally, good to see that also the hotel management was celebrating together with us the ending of that crazy year and a start into a new one, dancing with the guests and taking very good care that everybody on that party was happy.

Service

Absolutely perfect service. We know, that there has been a lot of disruption due to corona, hotel was closed for a period, and it turned out to be a general problem in the travel industry to get the good, and experienced people back. However, the service in that hotel was great, and they made sure that newbies were always paired with experienced staff. In particular, we keep Khun Ning and Khun Brook from the F&B department in best memory. Last but not least, I would like to thank Khun Tak from Front Office for … just being her 😊 one of the brightest persons we met so far, making our stay unique...

This review concerns our recent stay at Anantara Hua Hin. We are repeat customers and have stayed at Anantara Resorts around the world. The staff at this hotel are very polite and friendly (excluding leadership). We spent around 5000 baht providing tips to the staff during our 4-day stay. We were not informed that building work would be going on at the hotel on the last day of our stay. This included using power tools such as drills, saws, angle grinders etc which started in the morning close to our room. At first, the hotel did not care but then offered a slight reduction in our room rate. I was not after a reduced rate or a refund. I would have preferred the hotel to donate to Sunshine Children's Home, Hua Hin which they refused to do. During our stay in Hua Hin, myself and my wife donated to this orphanage. Upon checking out, the hotel staff put my UK-issued Mastercard into their card machine and informed me that my card had been declined. They tried the card several times, however, they did not ask me to type in my pin number. The card cannot be authorised without a pin number, as it is issued by a UK bank. I was simply informed in front of other customers that my card had been declined. I have used this same card at 5 other hotels in Thailand, restaurants, supermarkets etc during this particular holiday. Each time I was asked to type in my pin number. I had to wait several hours before I could contact my bank which is based in the UK, because of the time difference. My bank informed me that they could see all of the attempts to charge my card by the hotel, however as no pin number was entered the card was being declined automatically. This caused my bank account to be frozen as it triggered a fraud alert due to the multiple attempts. It was not because of insufficient funds, as the hotel suggested! The card cannot be authorised without a pin number, which the hotel should have known. I asked to speak to the General Manager who is apparently on holiday, but they would not provide me with her email address. The office manager who I spoke to was very unhelpful, she could not understand that a pin number is required before the card could be authorised by the issuing bank. The hotel banks with Bangkok Bank, for clarification I went to a local branch and asked them why I was not asked for a pin number by the hotel staff when the card was placed in the card machine. They informed me that all UK-issued Chip and Pin cards would require a pin number or else it would automatically be declined. Having been going to Thailand for over 20 years, I have never experienced such poor customer service as I have by Anantara Hua Hin. Very poor leadership is in place at this establishment.

MR...

This review concerns our recent stay at Anantara Hua Hin. We are repeat customers and have stayed at Anantara Resorts around the world. The staff at this hotel are very polite and friendly (excluding leadership). We spent around 5000 baht providing tips to the staff during our 4-day stay. We were not informed that building work would be going on at the hotel on the last day of our stay. This included using power tools such as drills, saws, angle grinders etc which started in the morning close to our room. At first, the hotel did not care but then offered a slight reduction in our room rate. I was not after a reduced rate or a refund. I would have preferred the hotel to donate to Sunshine Children's Home, Hua Hin which they refused to do. During our stay in Hua Hin, myself and my wife donated to this orphanage. Upon checking out, the hotel staff put my UK-issued Mastercard into their card machine and informed me that my card had been declined. They tried the card several times, however, they did not ask me to type in my pin number. The card cannot be authorised without a pin number, as it is issued by a UK bank. I was simply informed in front of other customers that my card had been declined. I have used this same card at 5 other hotels in Thailand, restaurants, supermarkets etc during this particular holiday. Each time I was asked to type in my pin number. I had to wait several hours before I could contact my bank which is based in the UK, because of the time difference. My bank informed me that they could see all of the attempts to charge my card by the hotel, however as no pin number was entered the card was being declined automatically. This caused my bank account to be frozen as it triggered a fraud alert due to the multiple attempts. It was not because of insufficient funds, as the hotel suggested! The card cannot be authorised without a pin number, which the hotel should have known. I asked to speak to the General Manager who is apparently on holiday, but they would not provide me with her email address. The office manager who I spoke to was very unhelpful, she could not understand that a pin number is required before the card could be authorised by the issuing bank. The hotel banks with Bangkok Bank, for clarification I went to a local branch and asked them why I was not asked for a pin number by the hotel staff when the card was placed in the card machine. They informed me that all UK-issued Chip and Pin cards would require a pin number or else it would automatically be declined. Having been going to Thailand for over 20 years, I have never experienced such poor customer service as I have by Anantara Hua Hin. Very poor leadership is in place at this establishment. MR...