Amari Koh Samui

We shared for a week in August 2026, due to a booking quirk we had 2 rooms for 2 days and a joined room for 5 days ( no fault of the hotel)

The hotel is split into 2 properties, 1 beach side and 1 larger area over the main road. If you are booking, book beach side as the rooms/views and location is far superior.

When checking in there is a sign on the desk saying please do not smoke cannabis in public areas which caught us a bit unaware in a family hotel, checking in takes a fair amount of time but you do get a nice welcome drink.

We get moved in and go to the beach area to look at the views which are spectacular then went to get something to eat/drink. This is the first problem we encountered. We worked in hospitality, we know how staff flow. We ordered the food and eventually 1 dish came, we asked multiple times for the other 3 dishes which eventually came after the first person had finished. Our food tasted really nice but was stone cold. ( 3 burgers). We ate it anyway. More on this later.

We then decided to go into the sea, walked past a sign saying watch for coral/sea urchins and stingers etc. Visibility is 15 ft and the water is lovely and warm. Brilliant stuff. Then my son said he cut his foot. so we got out and had a look, the brilliant bar staff got a first aid kit and cleaned it. Great work from them. They then advised to get it stitched and the manager drove us to the hospital in a golf buggy. It is about 100 ft away luckily. My son's foot was sorted and the holiday can continue. We are VERY grateful for the staff that helped us.

Next morning breakfast. It is very chaotic but the staff do their best. Good options and everything is very clean and tasty.

Went to the beach again and noticed no-one is in the water. which we thought odd despite my son's mishap. This is all along the coastline which is odd.

Had lunch and again the food simply doesn't get delivered all together. It does taste very good though and is varying temperatures. While drinking in the bar later we noticed hot food out from the kitchen just sitting there while waiting staff just walk past it. This is the fundamental problem, there is no desire to work together for the guests. As I mentioned we worked in hospitality and the staff just walk around empty handed. They bring a drink and they walk from your table leaving all the empty glasses there. You have to physically give them your glass or it just gets left. There would be 4 empty glasses on the table, they have an empty tray, pick up 1 glass and leave the 3 next to it which doesn't make sense. So the next time we ate there we said before can we have everything together and hot, we explained that we had experienced and seen happen and from that point service was excellent( credit where it is due they listened and fixed the issue for us) . However we could see other tables still being poorly served so what they need to do is sort out the restaurant management and train the staff properly. Then it would be perfect.

We then checked out our first 2 rooms and moved to our rooms outback of the hotel over the road. The rooms are not as good and ours had a broken light fixture, wobbly tap, screen doors that fall off which compared to the beach side rooms are a poor second. They are functional at best.

We walk out of the room onto the small patio to be met with a lovely pool that just reeks of cannabis. This is pool with families using it. So clearly the guests ignore the reception sign. Every day for the 5 days it smells of it. I don't understand why people think it is ok to totally disrespect other guests this way. If you want to smoke it I have no problem with it but we shouldn't have to put up it. I told the barman and he just shrugged 'not my problem'

The other problem is outside food/drink. A family turned up with takeaway pizza and the barmen runs over to say they can't eat outside food here. ( at least it was hot I would argue) but a man turns up with a litre bottle of vodka proceeds to spend the afternoon drinking the lot with 2 older women and dive bombs the pool repeatedly soaking other people and that seems to be ok with the staff. Cocktails are also wildly inconsistent even when ordering the same thing 5 minutes later.

Some notable mentions before I get to the real problem of staying here.

The manager and bar staff who helped my son after his cut. Excellent. The restaurant manager who listened to our concerns with the food and remedied it. Excellent. The staff who run the Thai cooking class, Excellent (and a class well worth doing) The lady that boss the trips on the front desk. excellent and very informative.

Now the problem with this hotel and I must stress it isn't limited to this hotel alone. On our penultimate night a member of staff run to the waters edge to tell a couple paddling to get out of the sea. This was weird. I asked the member of staff why he asked people to do that. He said the sea is very dangerous at dusk dawn and nighttime. Turns out it is inhabited with Box Jellyfish. If you don't know what one of those is I suggest you look it up before going anywhere near the water. There are lots of species of box jellyfish but these particluar ones are the worst. It makes the sea unusable, a cut toe is the least of your holiday problems.

My advice to the hotel would be PUT A BIGGER SIGN UP, you have one for cannabis, put a sign up on reception to make it clear. It is important. Selling pool shoes would also be an idea.

Anyway, we enjoyed our stay, great views and some excellent staff but let down by things that are simple to fix with a bit of effort.

4 star at best.

Lovely family hotel, children liked the rooms (Hut style) as it was a different experience to what they are used to, however for a family of 5 (2 adults and 3 children under 10) it would've been better to have a bigger room (connecting ir 2 bedroom rooms) as I had booked Delux family room with an extra bed. Food selection for breakfast was fabulous something for everyone. Hotel had 3 pools, was nice to for kids to switch around. We had an issue with Ac not working few days before leaving but on the last night around 11pm I got really hot and called reception, maintenance came very quick. I didn't expect them to fix it but they managed to get upstairs working where the kids were sleeping. Reception checked in to see how we were doing and offered to send a fan over for downstairs, which was extremely powerful. Next day duty manager heard of the ac problem and checked in to make sure we were ok and apologised for the inconvenience. My fault but wish I had called them earlier when we noticed the room wasn't getting cold enough. Staff in and around the hotel were amazing and friendly. Wish we couldve used more of the facilities around the hotel. Overall would definitely come back to this hotel.