Ao Cho Grandview Hideaway Resort

They said 5 stars, 3 stars at most! There's no table or chairs in the room! The prices are outrageous everywhere, and it's dirty everywhere! The food was more or less okay! There's no pool—what 5 stars?

Fantastic location and room. On arrival, told at the empty bar only 2 flavour smoothies available eventualy they admitted to having a coconut juice but didnt get the smoothie. It was a sign of things to come. We moved across to eat at the restaurant where after 5 minutes the bartender delivered a menu with our drinks despite having rung the bell twice to alert the vacant dissinterested restaurant staff they were ready to be served. We had to call out to the two still chatting waitresses to place our order. Waited 40 minutes for ordered meal at an almost empty restaurant only to be told when we finally approached them and they returned from the kitchen that we must wait 10mins or cancel the order. It was our first night so I asked to see manager, told he was in bangkok. So no management, it started to worry us. Breakfast confirmed our concerns. It was by far and away the worst buffet selection of 10 hotels we visited on this tript. We were there a week, Western options no bacon at all , no cheeses, only meat was ham served in water with chicken sausages and server's were not alight so everything stone cold. On day 5 my wife took a photo of the servers and the following morning they were lit. The staff are clearly totally demotivated and bored. On day 4 my wife asked for a banana which she got. Day 5 was told no bananas but she could buy a banana smoothie at the bar where there were bananas but she couldn't have one at breakfast which was the same two fruit options of dried out pineapple and watermelon. Again worst breakfast display of trip. After the night one incident I wrote to general manager whose fault it is as i do not blame staff for demotivation and laziness. Thats a management issue. His lack of respect in no response points to the cause of the issues at this hotel. The gardens were full of dead leaves and basically shoddy. Samet villas just a cove along shows how a decent hotel can keep the grounds. Our, I must say,lovely room had shared stairs with another room. I post 2 pictures of them to show how they were never swept once in our whole week. The beach was the home of 5 or 6 harmless loose dogs who unfortunately urinated regularly on the beanbag beach chairs which I never once saw cleaned. I am not sure I would have been so happy had i young children playing on the beach whilst the pack of dogs sprinted up and down and played rough house with each other and being fed by people so that any food eaten on the beach instantly attracted a dog or two sat asking of you One morning there were glasses left from the night before on one beach table. Still there when we left breakfast at 9:30. The bar is excessively overpriced compared to adjacent resorts and bars. No surprise that it is dead in the evenings lacking any atmosphere despite some entertainment around 7pm. The hotel was full so clearly most others also frequented other adjacent resorts to eat and drink. The bar was empty, the restaurant hardly used in our experience. My one question to the directors of this chain is look at your bar and restaurant volumes. It tells you something needs to change. This hotel is in such a beautiful location and we had a great room but its a big mistake to rely on this. Our other 9 hotels all got fantastic reviews from me on this trip based predominantly on the wonderful staff and service you find throughout Thailand.This hotel was by far our most expensive stay but the detail left us so very disappointed. I see the thread of similar discontent in other reviews of this property so I hope the hotel management take this feedback constructively and don't simply take it out on the staff some of whom I should also add were the exception to the rule here. Loved koh samed and will definately return but sadly not to this hotel. You can do so much better and also at a much better price.

I would like to thank Tin for the excellent service he gave us. He made our stay here very enjoyable 😁