Prana Resort Nandana

Overall, it’s a really nice hotel. The rooms were generally great and both pool areas were really nice and felt ‘premium’. However, there are some key things that make it less desirable, including drink prices and the finish on the rooms. We also had a problem with our room booking which wasn’t dealt with particularly compassionately.

Bedrooms We had one of the cheaper rooms which was still great (Cozy Deluxe). It had everything we needed, including four bottles of water complimentary every day. The bed and pillows were really comfortable and the room was generally clean. The website notes that the room has blackout curtains – they may well be blackout but, as shown in the photo, the sun came streaming in through the sides so weren’t particularly effective. The other thing with the room was the entrance door – the rear corridor backs onto a back road/business area which was quite busy at times. This wasn’t a problem as you enter and exit the hotel from the front, but the door itself was poor fitting with gaps around it, meaning that it let a lot of noise through. I know this sounds like a bit of a poor review, but we were generally happy, but there were some key annoyances.

Breakfast We had breakfast included. The coffee and tea were nice and there was a nice egg station serving whatever you wanted. The breakfast was international buffet style with some chipolata-style sausages, beans, toast, etc., and a salad station and typical Thai food. I liked the fresh honeycomb. A few things could’ve been improved – for example, the waffles and pancakes are all pre-made, which meant they were cold. It would’ve been nice to have been able to order these hot. Breakfast overall was fine.

Location The road – like most of the beachside roads – is quite busy but not exceptionally busy. The hotel is split over both sides: the one side where breakfast is served and a nice pool/pool bar, and the other side on the beach with another restaurant and bar and infinity pool. There are plenty of restaurants in the area ranging from higher-end Western-style to more local Thai restaurants. The hotel is about a 5-minute taxi ride to Fisherman’s Village.

Booking I’ve included this as we had a particularly poor experience. We used Agoda.com to book. For some ridiculous reason, there’s no direct availability link to the hotel – so you place your booking and the hotel then ‘accepts’ this manually. In my case, I booked and some hours later got a reply from Agoda saying the booking had been cancelled (presumably as the hotel weren’t happy with the price or didn’t have availability). I then went to Booking.com and managed to get the same room at the same property, albeit for about £60 (total) extra for the four nights. On the arrival day, a few hours before we arrived at the hotel, Agoda emailed an invoice for my forthcoming hotel room – resulting in me now having two bookings – one with Agoda and one with Booking.com. Whilst the hotel weren’t to blame at all, I find it inexplicable that they accepted a second booking with the same name/email address and for the same dates and then refused to cancel either booking. This was ultimately Agoda’s fault, but I was not helped at all by the hotel. Luckily, we had only booked four nights and were staying on the island for a longer period; the hotel therefore allowed the one booking to be moved to the consecutive four nights, albeit charging us 1,000 THB (£22) per night as they said that the room rate had increased for those dates. The whole saga was a complete mess and we felt a little ripped off. Agoda were exceptionally unhelpful. And we felt like the hotel were just profiteering.

Staff Overall, they were great. Friendly, professional and welcoming. The one waiter at breakfast was notably friendly and warm every day (Mhok) - a real asset to the hotel. I did feel that the reservation manager, as mentioned above, lacked empathy or any sort of customer-focus in her interactions with us. Even if she’d said at the end something like ‘look, I’m sorry about this – I can see how this is a poor start to your holiday’ and brought us a beer or something, it would definitely have helped.

Restaurant/bar/spa The simple summary is that all are overpriced. They are very reasonable in comparison to UK prices, but expensive for Thailand. Local bars are often 70 THB for a small beer (£1.50), whereas the hotel is 160 THB (£3.50). Dinner is around 500+ THB (£11+) a meal. This all sounds super reasonable but not against the backdrop of paying under 1,200 THB (£27) for two people for a shared starter, main each and two drinks each at a restaurant up the road from the hotel. The hotel does Happy Hour between 3-4pm and 5-6pm every day. During these times, the bars actually have customers, as drinks are around 300 THB (£6.70) for buy one, get one free cocktails. I find it utterly incredible that the hotel sales team doesn’t reduce the prices or do special offers to make the place more popular. Staff are hanging around doing nothing; bars are empty and the restaurants have no customers – a very odd business model.

Pools The pools were really nice - clean and the infinity pool overlooking the sea was lovely. My only negative comment is about the sunbeds. I’m not sure whether they leave these out overnight but as shown in the picture, they aren’t very clean at all.

Insect/bug control This is a bit challenging but mosquitoes were ubiquitous in this area. To the extent of thinking twice about where to go, what to wear etc. this is not the hotel’s fault in any way, but they could’ve done a lot more. to assist with this. For example, it doesn’t appear to be any insect repellent used in the grounds of the hotel. The cleaner also leaves the room door wide open when cleaning - resulting in us being bitten overnight almost every night. In many hotels, we have stayed in, they have undertaken pest control in both the grounds and the rooms.

Really good breakfast good beach