The ShellSea Krabi Luxury Beach Front Resort & Pool Villa

The resort has exceeded my expectations. The resort is beautifully maintained, peaceful and quiet. All the staff offer amazing customer service. A big shout out to the poolside staff, whose enthusiasm is brilliant. Would highly recommend this hotel for anyone looking for a luxury resort with great facilities.

We booked this hotel expecting a luxury experience and a 5-star hotel standard, especially for the price paid (appx 11,000 baht per night for the basic garden view deluxe room). Unfortunately this hotel did not live up to our expectations. I’ll start with what we liked: some of the staff are nice, friendly and helpful. Booked a private Muay Thai lesson and the instructor was great. The pool water temperature was good (not too cold). The sea views and trees/greenery around pool were nice. The basic deluxe room with garden view is spacious. The facilities are clean. The breakfast had a good variety of options. If you’re a family with kids it seems like the hotel is child-friendly (some activities, cute little disney cups and plates in breakfast) However, we expected certain quality and standard for the hotel which was not apparent. The room is a bit worn out (some towels were old and you can see them breaking down, the door knob card scanner kept falling every time we closed the door). The room overall did not feel/look new or fresh. The quality of the bathroom toiletries were below average. And quality of hotel feel was generally low (e.g. fake plant decorations on the dining area table). The 2 pools are much smaller than what they look like in the pictures. The elevator in our building often smelled like wet carpet. When we checked in the receptionist told us that our chosen room preference was not available so we had to stay in another allocated room; I had to spend 20 mins convincing her that the allocated room was not what we had booked and not what we paid for. After a long tiring discussion she was able to find the room that we originally booked (I mean if the room was available this whole time why make your customer work so hard to get what they actually booked?). She was not very friendly either - we had questions about certain places around Krabi and she was not able to help or answer our questions fully. The lady who checked us out was also not friendly at all (Nam), not a single smile and very rigid demeanour. The resort itself is a bit further away from most restaurants/lively areas. Which we originally did not mind assuming a luxury hotel would compensate in quality and experience. They do have a few classes like yoga/thai boxing for an extra fee, village walk… etc which is nice. They have a shuttle that goes to/from town 4 times a day but it only fits 8 people so we can never use it unless we book it at least 2 days in advance. For a 5 star hotel that is at 70% capacity in high season I expected them to either increase the number of shuttles or frequency, especially that the town is just 15 mins away from the hotel by car. Overall, it was an okay experience that did not meet our expectations. If you’re looking for a luxury 5 star hotel experience I would not recommend this hotel. But if you find the hotel at a good rate and want something just comfortable then this may work for you.