Access Resort & Villas - SHA Plus

This is a good value for money hotel.
If you're on a tight budget, this is the place.
It's in a good location.
Not far from the beach if you were walking and the hotel does do a twice daily shuttle bus.
As you walk out onto the main road there are plenty of shops and restaurants in both directions.
What we found here is the food, drink and money exchange was the best we had found on our Thailand trip.
The Hotel is clean and presentable.
Staff are very friendly and welcoming.
My only real gripe is that as a non smoker, smoking was allowed to happen around the outside food eating area.
If I was to return to Thailand, I would use this hotel as a base whilst in the area.

November '24 stay. Stayed as a couple as a follow on stay after Bangkok.

I'll start with the positives, as there are far less than the negatives...

Good location in Karon, quiet and only 15 minute max walk from the beach, but far enough to be away from the chaos of the town.

Staff extremely friendly, although not many good English speakers, but we got by, no problems.

Public area's/ gardens/ pools, very clean

Now the not so good points...

This hotel is very, very tired & unloved.

We booked a pool access Blue Wing room.

1st thing we noticed was the AC didn't work, it was just a very noisy unit in the ceiling doing nothing but blowing warm air around,

2nd thing, bathroom unclean, mould on window frames, scum around the very dated suite/ taps/ shower enclosure.

Key card had to be in for the power/AC but no 2nd key and option (meant to be 5 star)

Wall lights hanging off the wall

Safe broken

We went to reception, to find another couple muttering similar complaints & looking for another hotel.

We were offered & shown another room, sadly exactly the same, possibly 1° or 2° cooler but still tired & dated

The manager apologised & took us to a suite, with very cold AC, private pool AND a spare power key, so we accepted.

Breakfast..... Exactly the same basic/ limited offering in the same order.... 9 mornings in a row.

Up-sell was very prominent... Proper coffee with breakfast, chargeable

Ice bucket for the room, chargeable

We didn't eat for lunch or dinner so we can't comment on this.

As we came back in 1 evening, the entertainment was so dreadful, the singer was singing to herself, the other nights was not much better.

The beds were unbelievably hard.

Although our room should have been a lot more money than we paid for our original room it still had lights hanging out the ceiling, pool area again very tired, but was a lot better than the 1st 2 offerings.

We are pretty well travelled & my wife works in a 5 star hotel in the UK, but we appreciate that standards can vary from country to country, but honestly, I've been very generous to give 3 stars.

Just a very tired building, through & through

Would we return?

Probably not

Would we recommend?

Other than the location, absolutely not

This hotel is in need of a refurbishment. The location is a 20-minute walk from the beach but offers a twice daily shuttle. The staff are great very helpful and friendly. But all of the good is outwayed by the poorly maintained pools and bathrooms. The hot water in our room was hit and miss, and the air-conditioning struggled with the heat.