Amari Koh Samui

Very good service Fern really help us But every one was incredible everyone The gurd the restaurant team Everyone thanks you !!!

This was our second time holidaying in Koh Samui. I want to begin by saying that the staff at the Amari were lovely. We arrived very early in the day for our 10 day stay with my parent, son and friends. While the lobby was lovely, it looks like w four star lobby, not five, as does the basic little sign at the hotel’s entrance.

Upon check in we were asked to do the usual presentation of passports, but what threw me is that we were also asked to leave a deposit of several hundred dollars on our room account via our credit card. I have never been asked to do this before, and it put a serious dent into the money we had transferred into our daily cash allowance in our transaction free credit card. A five star hotel usually places more trust in its patrons. I told my friends who were also staying at the hotel at the same time as me, and they said that they were not asked to put a deposit down, so I don’t know why it was different for us. This made me very uncomfortable. It was not put to us as a suggestion, but rather as just the way they did things.

Moving on after that check in, they told us the first day we arrived didn’t technically count as one of the 10 days’ buffet included days, so we were given the option of purchasing our breakfasts for quite a costly sum each, or using the à la carte service in a part of their restaurant that was in a back corner with no ambience. I think for a stay of 10 days we could have been granted included access to the buffet. So we did indeed buy ourselves a à la carte breakfast each, and the items just ended up being parts of their usual morning breakfast buffet. It wasn’t the best start to the hotel experience. I would suggest going next door to the 7 Eleven and grabbing some coffee and breakfast items from there. That would have been much more economical. The breakfast buffet itself was good without being amazing. I booked this hotel in part due to having read some reviews saying the food was amazing in the buffet. That is a stretch. While there are items like the Indian section with nice curries, the pastries were not great, so I didn’t end up eating any croissants, sweets past the first day, and my family members said the same thing. They were hard and tasted funny. This buffet does not compare anywhere close to the excellence of the Centara buffet in Koh Samui where we stayed last time. That one was truly a five star experience.

Our room was not available when we checked in, but when it finally came through later that morning, they gave us a lovely pool with a balcony overlooking the back pool, as per the reservation request. While the room itself was lovely, the bathroom was dark and without any natural light, and showing signs of dating. There was poor light in there, so for 10 days I put my makeup on as a bit of guess-work. In lieu of no natural light, a wall mounted lighted make up and shaving mirror is required. Something that a 5 star hotel would have had. The air conditioning in the room was excellent, and the doors sufficiently noise-blocking. The rooms in the Garden Pool wing where we stayed had very comfortable beds for a good night’s sleep.

Something I do need to point out is that while we absolutely loved the pool in the garden wing where we were staying, the towels given to us to put on the pool chairs often had a musty smell to them despite being the freshly laundered ones, so either more detergent needs to be used on them to sanitise them, or they need to be dried further before being presented to guests. After sitting on them and using them to dry one’s skin, I was often left with a musty, mouldy smell on my skin. Again, it is these details that need to be tended to if you truly want to consider yourself a 5 star hotel.

Also worth noting and that I wish I’d known before booking is that the beach in front of the hotel itself is not a swimming part of the beach. It is shallow and silty, so we stuck to the pool, and sometimes walked about 15 minutes to the right on the beach to get in a good swim. Having said that, the water at that spot 15 minutes beyond was so lovely, and we probably should have gone for more swims there during our stay. The pool at the front of the hotel is mostly decorative and shallow, so that is something worth knowing too.

For the price we paid it was a nice hotel in a very handy part of town close to everything. The hotel is starting to look tired, however, and needs some ongoing upgrades if it can truly be called five-star.

It is a 10 minute drive from the airport, so that was a big plus after long travel.