My wife and I stayed from 4th January 2013 to 11th January 2013 at the Apsaras Beach Resort and Spa. First of all I want to remark we had booked the transferservice from Phuket Airport to the hotel, which the hotel offers for 1'700 Bath per way. We were picked up by a driver with a passenger car. Afterwards I can say this service was it worth. The distance from the airport to the hotel is roughly 100 kilometers. I think it's not realistic to find a taxidriver who will do the job for much less money.
The facility of the hotel ist mostly awesome. The lobby looks very clean and it's constantly engaged with a person from staff. Pedestrianways in the hotel area looks nice and are clean either. We didn't really use the pools but they seemed clean. The hotel owns two restaurants. We only tried the one at the beach. Quality of meal there it's ok, but nothing special. Otherwise it isn't a cheap decision to eat there. Because of this we often went to the beachrestaurant near the hotel. You only have to cross the little river to go there. In this restaurant you can find a basic dish for more or less 100 Bath. What I can recommend is the candle-light dinner who is held every wednesday. Another possibility to have meal outside of the hotel ist nearly 1 kilometer to the nord. If you walk along the beach-street, after passing two or three other hotels you will receive a cross-way. There you will find four restaurants where you can eat seafood or just local Thai food. In addition there is a little shop where you can buy water, cookies, bikins and other things you may need.
Unfortunately the beach in front of the hotel has been in a bad condition recently. I'm not a geographer but for me it looks like as the beach has eroded because of the tide. Likley the beach will become one day beautiful again. Another issue is the rubbish at the whole beach. I'm disappointed I never saw anybody from the staff cleaning the beach area. I saw the same piece of rubbish laying there during our whole stay and I guess the situation will not change. I hope the hotel managment will order his staff to clean the beach. I guess one hour a day by one employee would have a big effect.
Our room have delighted us very much. First of all we loved the bathroom, except the shower. However, I have to mention that the pressure of the waterpipe which supplies the shower sometimes was very low. The beds were huge and comfortable too.
People from staff were always polite and smile every time at you. I'm afraid to say that many times some of them were overextended with their tasks. Perhaps a reason is not all of them can speak English well enough to work in a international hotel. Otherwise it seems they really don't know, what they have to do. For example: At the breakfest a hostess with a pot of tea in her hand can pass over your table three times but she won't ask you if you want some tea. Everytime we wanted to have tea we had to go to the table on which tea and coffe were prepared and ask for service.
At our last days we enjoyed the spa in the hotel. We can absolutley recommend it. We had an aroma massage and it was a pleasure!
As a conclusion I can say about the Apsaras Beach Resort and Spa: It's a very nice hotel with sometimes overextended staff and a beach which has seen better days.