Beautiful resort in Samui with quiet private beach. The staff here are first class -always smiling. The swimming pool is huge. It’s impossible to not feel at home. My 3rd visit - and I’m already planning to be back.

I stayed at the Anantara Lawana from April 11th to April 14th 2019, travelling with my elderly father of age 79 with impaired mobility. We chose the bustling Chaweng beach to close off our trip to Bangkok and the quiet neighboring island Koh Phangan. When we arrived at our hotel at 1 pm. we were made aware that the main road in Chaweng Beach was going to be closed for 3 days due to Thai New Year celebration, the Songkran Festival, and thus our hotel would be inaccessible by taxi during our stay and when leaving to the airport. No possibly to get a taxi was not an option for us, given my father’s condition. Therefore, I had to immediately organize an alternative place to stay, cancel the original booking and book another hotel, stressful after the transfer by Ferry to Koh Samui and the taxi ride to Chaweng. I chose the Anantara Lawana mainly due to its location, close to Chaweng but in a more quite area, not affected by the Songkran Festival. Five minutes after booking, the Anantara sent their private limousine to pick us up and take us to their hotel right away. At arrival, we were completely exhausted, the heat that day was overwhelming and the trip had been long. But when Sam from the reception team greeted us at the door we felt welcome immediately. In Thailand you will find excellent and friendly hotel staff in most of the tourist resorts, but this time it was special, genuine happiness to welcome us as guest at the hotel, we could feel that and it was contagious. While we did the check-in Sam provided us all information regarding the hotel and also insider tips the Songkran festival, much appreciated, I followed all his advice and had a great time celebrating Songkran as locals do. I travel often for work and leisure and must have stayed at hundreds of hotels, but this was most likely the best and most competent check-in experience I have ever experienced, Sam seemed to be even more happy to check-us in and show us our two rooms than we were – what a perfect way to start our short stay on Koh Samui!
The hotel is the wonderful hideaway close to the epicenter and nightlife of Chaweng, but quiet. There are taxis and Tuk-Tuk’s available that take you to Chaweng in not more than 5-10 minutes. Across the street there are two supermarkets, a pharmacy and Thai massage facilities, as well as a small restaurant with cheap and delicious Thai food, perfect those who wish to cater or eat outside without going to Chaweng each day. The beautiful rooms are in small villas and very spacious, they all have balconies and enormous bathrooms and incredible bathtubs. Breakfast leaves no desires, and in case it gets too hot during the day at the infinity pool, the library offers relieve, with air-condition and lots of reading materials and books to use for free and in various languages. Since the hotel is quite large with some distances to walk depending on where the room is located, there are buggy cars with drivers available at any time to move around, great for elderly people or people with disability. We never had to wait more than 2 minutes for being picked-up.
I have stayed in Thailand many times given it’s my favorite country for vacation, and also been to Chaweng Beach many times since my first visit in 1999. Most of the resorts in the premium category have excellent facilities, nice rooms and pools and are very beautiful, – so it’s the their employees who really make the difference and create a lasting impression. I found the Anantara Lawana to be outstanding in this regard, the staff has been just amazing, incredibly helpful, kind, though not as distant as in other hotels, they genuinely care for their guest and go the extra mile whenever they can. Big thank you (ขอบคุณ) to both Sam and also to Babie from the reception team, you both made our stay unforgettable and I will come back to the Anantara for sure! 😊

A little late in writing this review but sadly straight back to work...

We stayed at the resort between the 29th of March and the 11th of April 2019.
With all my reviews I try to list the things the hotel does right and those that could do with improvement, in this case I can only think of one thing that could be improved and that was minor, everything else was first class.

Let’s start with our arrival. As seems to happen to us wherever we travel we arrived well before the advised check in time, it’s a nice touch to be ‘gonged’ in when you arrive, whether this is to make sure reception know someone has arrived to check-in I don’t know, but we had barely walked up to the reception area before we were greeted with a cool drink and cold flannels and as we soon found out - always a smile. Although we could not go to our room as it was not ready we were able to walk around the grounds and relax in the library, it is air-conditioned, and coffee and snacks are available there. Within a couple of hours we were told our villa was now ready and we were driven in one of the many golf buggies to our temporary home for a couple of weeks.

We stayed in plunge pool villa 421. All the plunge pool villas as two storey units with the plunge pool villas on the ground floor and the Lawana villas on the first floor. I cannot fault the room facilities or the way it was kept clean and restocked with water, coffee and tea. I’ll quickly mention the Wi-Fi here as it’s good enough to be able to stream and screencast Netflix etc to the large LCD screen TV in the room. There were no issues with hot water for showers it was there almost as soon as the tap was turned, and it was always constantly hot. There is separate air conditioning for bedroom area and for the bathroom/shower area. This brings me to the one thing that could be improved. There is no curtain between the bathroom and bedroom area which means light comes in through the bathroom doors at dawn and will wake some people up.

Villa 421 is a fair way from the Ocean Kiss restaurant where we ate breakfast and the occasional dinner and the hotel site is on the side of a hill, it’s not overly steep and exercise is good for you, but I can see why some other guests may find it a little arduous, I am now the wrong side of sixty and did not find it taxing – even if the temperature was 31c every morning when we walked down to breakfast.

I had read some reviews that complained about the lack of choice for breakfast, all I can say is that the reviewer must have been staying in a different hotel. There is fresh fruit juice of almost every kind and it’s excellent, there is fresh fruit, cereals and both continental style and cooked European style foods, bacon, sausages and the usual assortments along with eggs of every style to order. There are also Asian style foods – this hotel caters for the world.

The large infinity pool overlooking the beach is delightful, and I have taken baths in water that was colder! The beach area is clean and tidy and whilst we were there the sea was like a millpond and exceptionally warm, I have only ever been in one place where the sea was as warm as here and that was the Maldives, no-one bothered us on the beach, the only traders we saw were selling fresh fruit or inflatables for children.

The gardens are simply wonderful, and credit must be given to the groundsmen for keeping it looking the way it does, it added to a very memorable holiday.

There is one other restaurant at this hotel, Treetops is an upmarket restaurant and we were fortunate to eat there one night. It is the subject of a separate review, so I will not cover it here, save to say it was excellent.

My wife used the Spa on a couple of occasions and was full of praise for the staff and treatments, she also used the Gym, which was well equipped and clean.

The hotel location is perfect, just outside the main entrance are shops and a chemist should you need to stock up on anything such as milk for teas and coffee. For 100THB ( for two ) jump into a tuktuk and be in Chawang in a few minutes where there are endless restaurants and shops, or take a taxi to Bophut fisherman's market on a Friday night, it’s well worth the journey.

Apart from the physical attributes that mark out this hotel as excellent, the Jewell in its crown is its staff. I cannot praise too highly every member of the staff we met, they were simply the best we have encountered over the years. I will mention but a few, but every single employee seemed eager to assist and always with a smile.

Thank you to Dylan Counsel, the General Manger, who did an excellent job in making sure all his guests were happy. Thank you to Sunny in Guest Relations who sent us a bottle of sparkling wine when there was really no need to.

In the Spa, Da, who has magic hands. Nuang at breakfast who always made us feel welcome, and Tidtee and Oil who served us a beautiful meal in the Treetops restaurant, and all the staff in general who made us feel welcome and sad to leave.

What a fabulous team of people. We will not forget you.

In summery the Hotel and resort is amongst the very best we have ever stayed at and I would have no hesitation in staying there again should we one day return to Koh Samui.