Le Charme Sukhothai Reviews by Marlies Overbeeke & Wouter Franken

A total eclipse of service in Sukhothai
by Marlies Overbeeke & Wouter Franken, Netherlands - Nov 19, 2008

This place is very new and obviously the resort was constructed well. The little houses are nice and the building quality is uncommonly good for Thailand. With respect to service the situation is different and it shows the entrepeneurs who actually run the place aren't quite as experienced or knowledgeable about tourism as the building contracters were in terms of structural facility creation; a few examples: 1) The pool bar is non-existent, meaning frequent walks to reception who then calls someone to open a locked fridge somewhere to hand you a drink, which requires tedious administration time after time. 2) The room-safe and room-phone are not there, even though they are advertised in their own reception lobby 3) The reception-lobby is 1 single big step away from the outside road, and they want you to take your shoes off. So, every time you need to make that step, it's either "sitting down and taking shoes off"-time, or bending over the gap to talk. Considering point 1 and 2, you'll be ding a lot of loud awkward talking, or shoe removing. Which is very annoying and I can't help but think it's intentional to piss people off and teach them "culture", which is fine in a temple, but not a reception. We're customers for crying out loud. 4) Only the owner speaks English and isn't very helpful in her attitude. You just know when somebody doesn't understand you when you have a complaint, or simply plays dumb because it's convenient. 5) There are no area maps available, regardless of the fact that the location is poorly accessible without motorised transportation and far away from tourist offices who supply maps. 6) Bike rental is steeply priced and yield the most terrible set of bikes I have ever seen. And I'm Dutch, so I've seen a fair amount of crappy bikes rotting away attached to fences along Amsterdam channel bridges. 7) The most annoying thing was clearly the airport shuttle. Due to the location, there are no nearby taxis, or tuk tuks, so they raised the price of their service to 1000 TB, which is around twice as much as an airport taxi (that we couldn't call because we had no phone in the room, and they wouldn't call because they "didn't understand" our question, see item 4), and more than 4 times more expensive as a regular taxi of tuk tuk. Being ripped off is one thing, even though that rarely happens in Thailand, but being exploited is another. Bangkok's Sheraton operates a cheaper limo service than this. (their argument: normally it's 1500 TB; this is special price!!) So, take your own drinks, put them in the minifridge, arrange transport well before coming and leaving (take a business card from a taxi at the airport or bus station), and have zero expectancy of service and you should be OK.