JW Marriott Khao Lak Resort and Spa

A beautiful, well maintained resort hotel with lots of amenities and several good restaurants. Infinity pool, very good sandy private beach, kids activity room, check out resting place, marvellous breakfast in an open setup and lots of special features. The staff are so polite and go out of their way to help . It feels so private that your don't realise there may be 300 rooms. It is worth the money. Highly recommended for couples, for groups or for families.

I `ve spent two weeks here with my husband and a 9 year old daughter at the end of August/beginning of September 2018, which is considered low season. The hotel is not booked to the full but there are still many guest there: Europeans, Australians, Chinese. The big upside of the low season is that you do not have to fight for the sunbeds (even though you can see that some people still practiced leaving their stuff early in the morning and reserving their spot under the sun??? a sport very popular among Germans but more widespread in cheaper hotels than this one- I am just hoping management is undertaking something against this). The downside is that you always have a lingering threat of the rain (even though we were very lucky and despite having several cloudy days it did not rain for whole 12 days of our stay)and also that ocean is pretty rough. For most of our stay the flag on the beach was either red or yellow. But with such an amazing system of interconnected pools and canals, you do not regret not swimming in the sea that much. Especially our daughter was thrilled- she swam the full length of the canals every day or chilled on her inflatable pink flamingo (everything is teeming with the ???birds??? but somehow it did not bother us at all. ;o)) We had a ground-floor room where we could just simply plop into the canal and thus swim to the big infinity pool and the beach- a pure bliss. This is perfectly organized hotel where (almost) everything is impeccable- I really have to compliment the management. Architecture is amazing, gardens and vegetation beautiful and well tended, staff extremely polite and very tentative. The room was very clean and beautifully decorated. This is a place where you can really chill, relax and forget you everyday worries. I would also highly recommend the spa- amazing experience- during our stay they had lost of offers which I took advantage of. We tried out all the restaurants on the premises- apart from the Japanese one. Ta-Krai has a beautiful setting- next to the lily pond. Ask for a seat on the terrace. The food there was excellent. Olive is also very good Italian ??? we spoke with the Chef ??? he comes from the same area in Italy as my husband- so very authentic. We also went on the several excursions they offer at the hotel. All highly recommended: Temple Tour, Visit to James Bond Island.. There were very few things we did not like. First is, we had some very impolite Chinese neighbours who trespassed our balcony and left chewing gum and cigarette butts behind. The management really was very understanding and apologetic but there is only so much they could do. The other thing is the pollution of the sea and the beach. It is shocking to see what comes out of the water every single day. There were cleaners from the hotel every day but they just covered narrow stretch belonging to the hotel. There several guest, including us, who collected rubbish on their own initiative. We would not have minded if the hotel organized a cleaning action with the guest- I am sure many guest would happily join in. It just breaks my heart ??? because it dawns on you how big is the extent of the sea pollution and what is the fate of our planet.