An ideal affordable family-friendly hotel in the heart of Patong beach.
We spent 4 nights in the Holiday Inn Express during July 2021 at the start of Phuket Sandbox. Patong unfortunately was quiet during this time, with lots of restaurants, bars and shops closed. However, lots of places were being reopened daily and we found the Holiday Inn to be a perfect start to our stay in Patong.
Location
The Holiday Inn Express is situated on Had Patong Road otherwise known as the Rainbow Road and is ideally situated just steps from the beautiful Patong Beach.
Next to the hotel is a fantastic pancake stall that is open during the day (shuts at 6pm), and if you turn right of the hotel and go to the end of the street you will find a Family Mart and a 7Eleven. Turning left will take you to the beach in about 20 steps, if you follow the beach along to the left you will come to some beach shacks where you can get cold beers and decent pad thai. If you follow along the road alongside the beach you will come across the restaurants and bars as well.
Pancake stall Beach road Rainbow road
The Room
We stayed in 1 bedroom suite with an adjoining room which gave us ample space for a family of 4. The 2 rooms joined by a little lounge area with sofas, TV and fridge/kettle area with a toilet. Each of the 3 little rooms had a balcony with a chair and table too.
Showers, towels, toiletries, fridge, kettle and tea/coffee in each room – perfect for everything we needed. The boys had a twin room with 2 beds and ours was a comfy double with a choice of pillow – are you firm or soft?
Our room Living Space Kids room
Restaurants
Breakfast everyday is in the Great Room Bar, it’s a basic breakfast with cereal, toast, pastries, fruit and some hot food like sausages, eggs, beans and local options – noodles, rice etc. The coffee machine was good and there was more than enough to fill us up to start the day.
Next to the lobby is a little coffee shop ‘The Coffee Club’ where you can get coffee and cakes throughout the day.
At this time the restaurant wasn’t open for dinner, however the hotel was great at recommending places locally and helping to order food in with Food Panda – a Deliveroo type App which delivers food to the restaurant.
Facilities
Swimming Pool
The pool is right outside the lobby, it’s a good sized pool with steps on either sides making it perfect for kids to paddle and splash around. There is also a kids pool which is basically just a paddling pool. We spent a lot of mornings cooling off from the humidity at the pool.
Gym
A small gym that is available anytime, you just need to go to the front reception to sign in with COVID social distancing precautions.
Laundry Room
A blessing to anyone travelling for any length of time. Laundry in hotels can be so expensive so I always love to see a hotel with a laundry room. It was 100baht for a laundry coin and I was able to throw a wash on before breakfast and into the dryer afterwards. Ideal!
Beach
Although this isn’t a beach-front hotel it might as well be, the beach is just steps away from the hotel and it is gorgeous; turquoise blue sea, white sand and incredible sunsets.
Safety
All the necessary precautions were taken at this hotel, staff mask-wearing was consistent, temperature checks when entering the hotel and restaurants, QR code scanning of the Morchana App daily at breakfast and sanitizers everywhere.
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