My girlfriend and I stayed at Cielo for 5 nights at the end of a two week holiday in Thailand. Cielo was chosen to be the climax of our holiday and we were seduced by the location and aesthetics of the hotel after reviewing the website and its instagram. The architecture and rooms of the hotel are undoubtedly beautiful on the surface, the pool area and sunbeds are luxurious, whilst the restaurant food is very good. However, our stay at Cielo was generally poor and ruined by the substandard quality of our room and other amenities at the hotel. Our first day set the tone for our stay. Upon arrival from the airport, reception was empty so we were left alone for around 10 minutes with no hotel staff around (even though we had emailed in advance with our flight details and intended arrival time). After we were eventually shown to our room, we headed to the pool where a children’s birthday party was taking place - cue lots of shrieking and splashing from young children with zero concern shown by the attending parents and a loud ‘birthday’ themed playlist banging over the pool speakers. Cielo is a boutique hotel, therefore the pool area is small, meaning you are relying on the good grace of other guests, there is no space to move to a ‘quieter’ area and so the noise/splashing was inescapable. After one child proceeded to complete their 11th dive bomb in a row (thereby ensuring that our cocktails that we had purchased from the bar were at least 70% pool water), a parent did finally ask if we were being bothered. From her, we learned amazingly that this party was being thrown by the owners of the hotel for their daughter. We were therefore even more astounded by the lack of concern shown by the parents/owners for the other guests given the owners were the ones throwing the party for their own benefit. Sadly that was a prevalent theme during our stay, namely we got the feeling that the owners were generally content to use the hotel as their own accommodation (other examples include reserving the best seats in the restaurant for their friends and family each meal time) and as guests we should just be content that we were allowed to be present alongside them. Of course, as they are the owners, they may be entitled to act in this manner, however we did not feel this was befitting of a hotel attempting to position itself as luxury accommodation and represented very poor client service. Sadly throughout our stay, we also encountered numerous problems with our room: (1) there were problems with the water tank connected to our room so (i) the water coming from the taps was polluted and dark green, and (ii) there was little to no water pressure in the shower. Although the color of the water did get better after a a day or so, the water pressure problem was not resolved for a few days so we were left unable to actually wash properly for basically half the duration of our stay; (2) the toilet did not flush properly; (3) the fan in the room was stuck on one sett
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