Centara Duangtawan Hotel, Chiang Mai

I stayed in the Centara Duangtawan Hotel for 4 nights in July 2007. We had two connecting rooms, one with a king bed and the other two single beds. I spent many hours searching popular Internet booking sites (mainly Directrooms, Asiarooms, Atsiam and Sawadee) for details and reviews of hotels in Chiang Mai. My main aim was to find a nice place for my parents to stay on their first visit to Thailand. I finally chose Duangtawan due to the following reasons : After reading many reviews, and spending the four nights there, my opinion is that this was the right choice, and the hotel lived up to my expectation (and was even better than I thought). We got a 4 nights for the price of 3 deal, so it turned out the Deluxe rooms (which are one step up from Standard rooms) were less than 1600 Baht per night (per room). I booked over the Internet through Directrooms.com, which went smoothly. I didn't request connecting rooms on the booking (but wanted them) - turned out the hotel had gave us them already, so that was good. The main problem (and perhaps the only significant problem we experienced with the hotel) was the rooms were smoking. The smell was quite strong. There were no other connecting rooms available, so we decided to stay with these - it was really only noticeable after walking in from outside (I guess we got used to it). The rooms were big with good beds, furniture and bathroom. No problems, except (as several reviews had pointed out) the carpet doesn't look good (they look old and dirty). You do notice it, but it is nothing to make the room uncomfortable. Breakfast at the hotel was good - American Breakfast was included with our online booking. Plenty of selection: bacon and eggs, toast, pastries, stir fries, Thai soups, fruit, cereal, etc. Although one of my criteria for a hotel was having a pool, it turned out we only used it once. That was a mistake - it was a great pool and we should have used it everyday. Also, the gym, jacuzzi and sauna looked impressive (although we didn't use them). This part of the hotel exceeded my expectations. The service was good at the hotel. The reception was fast, and the concierge useful. We used them to hire a car/driver for a day. The concierge rang a local contact, who we spoke to on the phone about what we wanted. The driver was quite good, at a cost of 500 Baht. Of course the location of the hotel is excellent. It is literally 20 metres from the popular night bazaar. And it is easy to get transport to any other part of the city, 24 hours a day. Overall, I was impressed with the hotel and would recommend others to stay there. There are other options which like suitable (such as , as well as many of the resorts further out of the city) but not quite fitting our needs for this trip.

Created on Wed, 01 Aug 2007, 10:36pm

Last changed on Sun, 19 Sep 2010, 7:07pm