Tara Mantra Cha Am Resort

We enjoyed our stay. The staff are attentive but not intrusive. The room was a good size, clean and with nice amenities. WiFi was decent. The breakfast is well above the average you find at most hotel buffets. They have 3 swimming pools, 2 of them smaller pools on the 2nd & 3rd levels. The main pool and children's pool is on the ground level. It is much larger and nicer than any of the hotel's photos show. We were pleased. The hotel is across from the quieter north Cha-am beach area and is an easy walk to a good number of restaurants. We will be happy to book again at Tara Mantra.

The Tara Mantra is a nice hotel situated in a great area. 7-11 located nearby as well as great beach location with quieter setting for Cha Am. The property is dated a bit and the staff is not as warm as you would typically expect from a Thai hotel, still the hotel is good enough that I would be open to staying there again.

Good hotel, fully priced and then some. Two very nice swimming pools suitable for lap swimming. Excellent buffet breakfast.

The building could use some renovating, but the hotel is great with fantastic service. There is 3 outside pools on floor 1 to 3. Not the biggest pools but good enough for swimming. The 1st floor pool area also leads to the beach; just hop over the road and you are at the beach. This is awesome as if need to use toilet while on beach, you can easily walk back to hotel and use toilet at the 2nd floor pool. The breakfast is mainly Thai-style but has some western choices too, like sausage, bacon and potatoes (varies bit). many choices for bread. Overall the breakfast was good. Only bad thing was the coffee which tasted horrible. The area is rather western but there is couple restaurants nearby that serves Thaifood . I would skip the restaurants outside the hotel, unless you want westernized food. Road next to beach has Thai-dishes available. On negative sides only have 2 minor issues: - The hotel has bicycles available but only for 2h; after that you pay 20 baht/per. You can also only use them before 1800 but the english text is not updated but says 1900 which caused bit confusion. On quiet times they really should be more relaxed with the bikes. Feels silly to rent from other place. - I took Sprite from minibar (as they were nicely priced). It tasted strange so checked date: 30.6.2016. Went to complain and got new one and was promised I don't have to pay. On check-out they didn't have any notes on that but eventually got it for free. So check dates carefully.

Check in was great - friendly, efficient. Unfortunately checkout was the opposite. Staff with very poor attitude practically accused us of stealing a laundry bag. Yes - a laundry bag. We were stood there for 25 minutes. I offered to pay for it. But that wasn't apparently going to fly. I was afraid we would miss our flight. Eventually we were dismissed by the gestapo member who seemed to be running the front desk, and we were left to carry our bags to our hire car. Just goes to show that the guest experience is nearly entirely dependent upon the attitude and training of the staff.