Novotel Phuket Kata Avista

Rooms ok Atmosphere ok Location ok, next to night market

The facilities really added to our vacation. We enjoyed swimming in the morning, relaxing in the afternoon, and dining at the hotel in the evening. A special thanks to Bam for the wonderful hospitality.💖🙏🏻

What a most amazing hotel with the most welcoming staff, respectful, attentive and pleasant. Family of 5 (4 adults & 1 aged 14) arrived at 9pm to this wonderful hotel. The hotel lobby is open plan, like many Thailand hotels. It held a relaxed, yet very professional welcome from the guest relations team. After a very seamless check-in, we were offered ice-cold welcome drinks before having our bags taken to our rooms. As we had booked breakfast and dinner each day, we were issued with little vouchers to use for claiming our dinner (or lunch if preferred)

The rooms are beautiful, very clean and hold great storage. The bed is HUGE, and is very comfortable. The cleaning team do an excellent job to have the rooms tip top and spotless.

Our next morning was a welcoming breakfast in En Vogue restaurant with a range of international dishes AND some local Thai cuisine. As a plane eater, I was willing to try some of the Thai breakfast dishes and it was worth it. The waiting staff were so attentive and cleared dishes very quickly.

We had booked breakfast & dinner each day, and if we preferred, we could come for breakfast and lunch instead. The menu for lunch/dinner was extensive with many many options ranging from Thai dishes, Indian dishes, pasta, pizza, burgers and much much more. My favourite was bbq short ribs - take my tip - try these - they are divine. The waiting team served ice cold water throughout the meal, and provided what ever drinks you wished for. We did not go for AI as we don’t drink alcohol. Soft drinks at the bar are well priced.

The main lobby has a pool table - a favourite thing to do to fill time as we waited on our group of 5 to get ready for a night out. The pool table is free of charge. There is also a free table football game which was great fun.

The hotel is a short walk down a steep hill to Kata beach. This is a most beautiful beach and worth the short walk down. We loved it there, and consequently we did not use the hotel pool facilities (which are absolutely wonderful). The hotel puts on a complimentary bus to take you down and collect you from the beach due to the steep hill. HOWEVER, we ate so well at the hotel, we say the walk down, and the walk back up in the early evening as a wee way to lose some of the ridiculous calories we had consumed. It really is very doable. Steep (yes), but not too long.

The hotel (we discovered on our last day) has an ATM right in the lobby tucked behind a pillar.

If you have never been to Thailand, you will be shocked to to notice the crazy number of massage outlets. Being a masseur in Thailand is a very reputable career and we tried out one of the establishments in the area. It was very professional and an outstanding massage. DO IT, or you will miss out. The therapists sit outside the outlet each evening asking passers by if they wished to come in, and this is just what happens. Once inside, they are so professional and provide an exhilarating and very healthy massage.

There are pharmacies EVERYWHERE. Literally doors from each other, however, you will also find 7 Eleven supermarkets everywhere and they are very hard to beat on prices for even what you wish to buy in a pharmacy.

They offer bottled water for 8 Baht, bottled Coke Zero, Fanta, etc for 19 Baht. They sell lovely treats, crisps, sandwiches - alongside sun cream, toiletries, etc. They are a daily must.

We booked a driver (recommended by a friend who was visiting the week before we were). We simply asked him to take us to the best view points and places to see. We could have booked a tour from a company, but this man owned a lovely luxurious 9 seater taxi and charged us 300 baht per hour. He took us to see Big Buddha, Karon viewpoint, kata viewpoint, an elephant sanctuary (which is actually a charity for rescuing elephants) - this was very ethical and no one touched the elephants and they had hundreds of acres to roam. We went to Chalong temple - this was a wonderful place full of beautiful temple buildings which we could go in to view. The monks were lovely. We were with the driver for 5 hours - for only 1500 baht. If we were to have booked a coach trip, our time at events would be timed according to the itinerary - yet, we created our own.

Use BOLT app for taxi. It is cheaper than Grab. We took taxi to Patong for shopping centre, for watching a Thai fight at Bangla Thai Boxing Stadium. We also taxied to see Naga market, Old Phuket Town Market and Chilliva market - all very worthwhile. A taxi (6 seater) via bolt cost on average 479 - 559 baht for these trips. Due to the traffic, these could be 30 minute journeys, despite a distance of 6 miles only for some places.

Would I return to Kata? Yes. Would I stay in Novotel Avista Kata Resort Hotel again? 100% Yes - a GREAT hotel with the most amazing professional staff.