JW Marriott Khao Lak Resort & Spa

The facilities are very nicely designed, the beach is amazing, and the pool is great for the kids. The spa is very nice (though unfortunately very noisy during construction hours). The late checkout room is excellent! Food is good, service is so and so in the restaurants.

Well the construction going on is terrible but I think the attitude of the staff, especially when dealing with the guests’ complaints and requests, is even worse! On the first day, when we noticed that there is an extremely noisy construction going on and asked for a quite room, they said that this was the first day of the construction and they didn’t know about it before. I heard them saying the same to another customer on our last day! After noticing the sound -imagine a nonstop “bang bang bang” sound being heard every five seconds in the guest rooms, the beach, the pool, even inside the sea between 10am to 5pm!!! So loud that the massage bed in the spa is shaking with each bang!”- we immediately said that we won’t accept a room looking at the noisy construction. To this, the guest manager’s (Liv) reaction was “oh then we need to send you to another hotel”! At this point, I got seriously angry, and told her that I want to speak to her manager and I will go to another hotel with my 5 year old, she can’t threaten me like this, she realised that I am serious and started being apologetic. She tried to fix things afterwards and we didn’t push it too much and accepted a compromise as we didn’t want our son to get worried but I believe that telling a couple travelling with a toddler to go to another hotel on their arrival after a long international flight is unacceptable. It is not a good way to start a relaxing vacation. Unfortunately, the staff seem to be quite uneducated and perhaps tired/overworked. Most of them can’t speak proper English, the bell boys don’t help people arriving with luggages, they don’t greet people kindly. It certainly is not a typical example of Thai hospitality that we all admire. Thankfully, we are well travelled in Thailand and we go to beach vacations in SEA quite a few times every year, so this didn’t affect us too much, but we feel that it is a pity since the hotel is gorgeous in terms of location and facilities.