THAILAND: Courtyard In Surin Beach, The Hotel Where '2 Double Beds' Actually Means 'Twin Beds

Just back from Phuket where we spent one night in the Courtyard In Surin beach. I had chosen it because of its location not too far from the airport for our last night in Thailand.

My husband and I travelled with our 12-year old son and we had booked a room supposedly for 2, 3 or even 4 people (deluxe rooms with pool view )

When booking on their website, I made it clear there were 3 of us and I was asked to choose either 'king size plus extra bed' or '2 double beds'.

I booked '2 double beds' and immediately received confirmation that we would get '2 double beds guaranteed'. I printed the confirmation guaranteeing the 2 double beds and took it with us to Phuket.

But when we arrived, it turned out that these rooms that are supposed to accommodate as many as 4 people actually contain 2 single beds or twin beds and are really tiny.

We had a clash with the people at the reception who kept telling us that they were double beds, and that they were a Marriot Hotel, a 4-star hotel, so they knew what they were saying.

But we argued that according to international standards, double beds are meant for 2 people (hence the name) and not twin / single beds which they were,there was only one pillow on each bed! How could this be a double bed????

We had to give up in the end and accept to get a room with a king size + an extra-bed, which I would never have booked as these extra-beds are usually uncomfortable for pre-teenagers.

I then had to go back to the reception 2 times to get this extra-bed: it took them 2.5 hours to bring in a rollaway bed!!!!

Then we had to call housekeeping 2 times to get an extra set of towels as there were only 2 in the room.

These deluxe rooms with pool view cannot accommodate 4 people: how can they advertise them as such??? We could hardly move in the room with the rollaway bed. Even their king size bed is not that big

How can they a 4-star international hotel call single beds double beds????

I have just read that another person had the same problem last week: double beds advertised turned out to be 2 single beds in a tiny room supposedly for 4 people!!!

Other problems: there was a faint sewage smell in the room, and from I heard on the beach on the following day, we were not the only ones to have noticed it.

But what was really not up to 4-star hotel standards was the shower rooms they have for customers who take a late flight and want to get a shower before going to the airport.

They do have 2 shower rooms but these shower rooms open straight onto a corridor going to 2 offices where staff keep coming and going.

There are no seats in these shower rooms, no bench, not even a stool so you have to get dressed standing. And your clothes get soaked during your shower because there is no dressing room, unless the corridor is considered as a dressing room.

There were no toiletries in my shower room: I had to go to the reception (once again) to get some. But the worst was definitely the towels we were given for these shower rooms: they were actually beach towels piled up on some suitcases (not even ours) in the locker room, not bathroom nor swimming pool towels and they still had sand in them, the sand in Surin beach is very thin and sticky.

Not even clean towels! So we ended up using ours as we were sick of complaining and going to the reception.

I am still so mad at them that I decided I would write my first review about it. We stayed in 2 different hotels during our trip in Thailand and we didn't have any problems.

We didn't expect to get that sort of problems from an international chain of hotels as Marriott, specially when you see their price range!!!

I would definitely NOT recommend this hotel to a friend.