The Lamai Samui

Beautiful hotel , we had a king suite swim up double room. Staff were amazing , very attentive couldn’t do enough for you . Breakfast had lots of choice , restaurant food lovely . The pier very romantic watching sunset.

Only fault building works going on , this wasn’t mentioned when booking . Very loud until 6pm. Not really enough sunbeds for the guests , this maybe due to the building work.

That said we have had a lovely time .

Would definitely recommend this hotel .

We were delighted with how nicely appointed the ocean pool villa was. It was among the nicest settings we’ve experienced for accommodation. Photos don't do it justice. However, we felt routinely let down with the service overall at the Lamai Samui.

On the first day of our stay, we had lunch at their restaurant. We were at the time the only customers dining and sat upstairs to enjoy the view. Whilst the staff were kind, we found the service unusually inattentive and slow. I had to pop my head over the balcony several times to order to the table and to check what was taking so long with the meal. Whilst we had no intention of a long, leisurely lunch, our lunch visit lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes, the vast majority of that time spent waiting, initially with patience and as time wore on with greater confusion and annoyance. We could not fault the quality of the food, but our lunch there was easily and by far the worst dining service we had had in any restaurant and at any price point in Thailand, made worse by prices that are several times more than restaurants immediately outside the resort, those eateries we tried demonstrating significantly more organised and attentive service. I debated whether or not to pay the service charge at the time out of principle, but decided I would pay this nominal fee and tell Reception about my experience hoping my overall experience would improve for the rest of our stay. Whilst the response to our feedback was courteous, professional and apologetic, we unfortunately did not feel our experience of the service improved in the coming days and that little effort was made to rectify the poor first impression made. This is why upon checking out, I insisted the service charge be removed-- something that I am very reluctant to do anywhere.

Our first night, we ordered a bucket of ice to the room and waited some 20-30 minutes before having to ring again. We received the ice promptly after the second call, but again, this came after generating a fair bit of annoyance at the slow pace of uncoordinated service.

We are very appreciative that the team provided us with early access (by 2 hours) to our villa. This was a kind gesture and definitely a huge plus for us. We noticed however upon checking in that the shower gel dispenser in the shower was empty. This is something that should be attended to before guests arrive. Small detail but important, and again this left us feeling like we were paying premium prices for a substandard, disorganised service— a bit of a sour taste for us as we’ve holidayed extensively through Thailand for years and years, and this was our second accommodation in Koh Samui of a similar calibre. Upon checking-out, we were generously provided an appointment in a shower room at the Spa to enjoy the resort amenities before leaving for the airport, and whilst we acknowledge the generous hospitality of this gesture, the facilities even in this last experience lacked shower gel and conditioner, leaving us to unscrew the bottles and shake what was left at the bottom of the bottles.

A recurring issue we experienced during our stay was the long ‘queue’ for coffee to be served at breakfast in the mornings. This was not an isolated issue, and we noticed many other guests flagging this same issue with staff at breakfast. It was not consistent whether the host showing us to our table would take our coffee order, and it was very clear how slow and unorganised this was. Every day at breakfast, we had to ask again after some 15-20 minutes had passed if we could have the coffees we ordered, coffees arrived separately generating even more confusion, and every day we had more-or-less finished eating all of our food before coffees were set down on the table— not exactly a great start to the day... every day. When we asked where our coffees were, staff, though kind, gave nonsensical responses such as ‘it’s windy’ or showed us their dockets as proof of the queue for coffee orders. Either way, this is a poor impression to make at the beginning of guests’ days. It appears to be a very serious operational issue with the coffee service alone, as the service of made-to-order foods such as omelets was noticeably prompt by comparison. The fact that so many other guests were flagging the issue should have been a major red flag. Again, this was by far the worst breakfast service we have ever experienced in Thailand at any accommodation at any budget, and a real letdown for what we were hoping would overall be a spectacular experience.

Whilst we were very happy with the quality of the accommodation, we felt the service overall during our 4 nights was disorganised and slow with a lack of attention to detail, which truly is a shame because otherwise we would have left the Lamai Samui extremely enthusiastic to recommend it to our friends, family and colleagues seeking a luxury experience in Koh Samui.

We provided our honest mixed feedback at 4 different points of our stay: the first night so as to give them and ourselves the best chance to enjoy the rest of our stay, at the end of our stay upon checking out, afterwards in writing to their WhatsApp as they requested of us upon checkout, and a follow-up text. The last two went unanswered-- no response-- none, which really shows the staff and management of this resort don't really care after having gotten your money.

Looking for a luxurious place to enjoy Koh Samui? Look elsewhere. The service at the Lamai Samui overall is not up to scratch and uncharacteristic of virtually every experience we've had in Thailand over the last 20 years. On this last trip, we enjoyed fabulous service everywhere else we stayed and dined in Koh Samui and in Thailand during our 3 weeks there, but this place very unfortunately was the exception. Beautiful oceanfront location but absolutely dire service.