The Maleedee Bay Resort is a 3-star hotel well removed from Ao Nang beach. I stayed there in early December and rented one of the hotel’s well serviced motorbikes for 250 baht a day to go back & forth to the beaches and restaurants.
If you stay in a lot of hotels, you’ll quickly detect big flaws at the Maleedee most of which have to do with absentee owners who live in Bangkok and don’t involve themselves with day-to-day management. Here are its biggest flaws which may be notable to some and deal killers to others.
NO LOCKS ON DOORS: I found this very objectionable that there is no inside hasp which prevents someone from entering your room. Someone with a copied key or master key could theoretically enter your room with you in it! (See photo).
NO IN-ROOM PHONES: If you had a question (or emergency), this hotel saves money by having no room phones at all! A simple question like when breakfast opens and closes requires a trip down to the front desk.
VERY LITTLE ENGLISH: You would think that as the hotel caters overwhelmingly to European (farang) foreigners, some staff would speak adequate English. Their wonderful assistant manager (female) speaks good English as did another daytime (male) staffer. They had just hired a front desk clerk (“trainee” on her badge) who could not speak 10 words of English. Yes, this “trainee” would certainly have a lower wage than someone with sufficient English but at what price to the foreign hotel guest when they have any myriad of questions?
FRONT DESK CLOSES AT NIGHT: The front desk is unstaffed after either 9PM or 10PM – again, I feel, to save money as is the case with the phones, the inside door locks, etc. I live and work in Thailand and to save $200-$300 a month of the wage to have someone at the front desk for a 40+ room hotel seems Cheap Charley-ish to me.
FOOD: Everyone complained about the morning canteen breakfast where nearly all of the ‘hot’ dishes like scrambled or fried eggs were deliberately unheated hence cold to the touch. I pointed this out (I speak Thai) and they seemed unconcerned by it.
Also, their lunch or dinner options are pretty weak so one should schedule these two meals outside of the hotel.
COFFEE: As the hotel overwhelmingly caters to Europeans, they serve no fresh coffee in the morning but merely powdered instant Nescafe. Small point, I know. But, a symbol to me that the Bangkok-based owners know little about F & B or hotel management.