Choosing Thailand Hotels for Songkran

So, Golf and I are planning our next trip to Thailand for Songkran 2009 and I’ve been doing lots of research on hotels in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket. You know there are hundreds of hotels in each of the three locations ranging in price from $10 to over $1000 per night! While it can be a bit overwhelming initially, we know what we need so that helps narrow things down a bit.

Usually in Bangkok we stay at the SD Avenue Hotel, but this time we’re looking for a more central location and the SD Avenue is all the way out in Pinklao which makes for lots of long taxi/boat/bus rides.

Rather than put all of my thoughts into one post I’m going to spend some time looking at each of the short listed hotels and will then let you know our final decision and why we’ve chosen to stay in each of the hotels. And of course you’ll get the follow up posts in May 2009 to let you know our experiences and whether or not we made good choices (I certainly hope so).

Our choices in each of the three places are going to be based primarily on the following considerations:

Location: This is the key to our decision. Especially in Bangkok it is good to be as close to where you need to be as possible. This is true to a smaller extent in Chiang Mai. Phuket presents a different picture as our location decision will be mostly driven by the various beaches.

Price: Unfortunately I haven’t become rich yet from Thailand Musings so I need to keep things within budget. While my budget might not be your budget, I believe my choices provide good value for the money. If you’re looking for the cheapest places to stay then no need to read on as we are not going to be traveling on a shoestring budget. Think of us as more like flashpackers.

Room Amenities: The size of the room and access to Wi-Fi are the most important considerations here, but I can tell you that room amenities are a very distant 3^rd place compared to price and location.

That’s about it. I know some of you may be concerned with other facilities and amenities like swimming pools, restaurants, room service and the like, but I’ve found that I rarely use any of these and they certainly aren’t enough to make or break a booking decision for me. Though I will say that in some cases they may make sense and I will certainly include them in my reviews they are my very last considerations when looking at hotels.

So, here is the short list for each location:

Bangkok (Pratunam/Siam area) – Grand Centre Point Rachadamri Hotel, Pathumwan Princess Hotel, Pullman Bangkok King Power Hotel

Bangkok (Sukhumvit area) – Grand Millenium Sukhumvit Hotel, President Solitaire Hotel, Adelphi Suites Hotel

Chiang Mai – Imperial Mae Ping Hotel, Chiang Mai Orchid Hotel

Phuket (Patong Beach) – Millenium Resort, Patong Merlin Hotel, Impiana Phuket Cabana Resort & Spa

Phuket (Karon/Kata Beach) – Katathani Phuket Beach Resort, Mom Tri’s Villa Royale Hotel, Centara Villas Phuket

In the next few weeks I’ll let you know what I’ve found out about each of the hotels and which one’s we’ve decided to book. In the meantime if you have any experience with any of the hotels I’m going to discuss or any suggestions for other hotels we would all be happy to have your comments.

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