Major Grand Hotel, Chumphae, Thailand

The Major Grand Hotel is one of the few (perhaps two) large hotels in Chumphae, Khon Kaen. I stayed there for two nights, along with 8 other friends and family, for my wedding in May 2011. I think at this time the hotel had only been open for a couple of years.

Location

The Major Grand is on the right as you enter Chumphae from the south on road 201 (i.e. from Chaiyaphum). It is almost directly opposite the new Tesco Lotus supermarket. Other than that, there does not seem to be much within direct walking distance. Tesco has several restaurants to eat at (MK, KFC etc). Its a 5 minute drive to the centre of Chumphae, near the market.

Price

The standard rooms were 750 Baht per night. The suite was 2500 Baht per night. These were prices available direct from the hotel. The price included breakfast.

Rooms

The standard rooms were a good size and include the normal amenities of a 3 star hotel. Bathroom was reasonable size; king-sized beds; mini-bar; wardrobes and free drinking water. Nothing special but ok. The beds were hard: most people staying commented that they weren't too comfortable. We stayed in the suite for our wedding night. Its a very large area, but not designed to utilise that area very well. At the entrance is a 3-4 metre corridor of virtually no use, and then it turns left to the living area. This living area is quite long (a table then a fridge then some sofas) but only 2-3m wide. The sofas face a large LCD TV, behind that is the bedroom with king-bed. We had 10 people in the lounge area comfortable sitting around a coffee table for dinner. This was the main reason we booked the suite - so we could have drinks and dinner in the room together. The bathroom is very large, with basin, toilet, shower and a big spa.

Food

I was concerned that being a little out in the sticks (I guess Chumphae could be equated to Mt Gambier in Australia; a small rural town), as well as not having many foreign tourists, that the breakfast and dinner may be poor quality. But I was wrong. On the first night we ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. (There weren't many other options; there is a outdoor restaurant and bar on the hotel grounds, but there were no customers when we had a look. In fact there were no customers in the hotel restaurant either!). As usual we ordered 6 or 7 popular tourist dishes for the 8 of us to share. I recall: Tom Yum Goong (spicy prawn soup), Chicken and Cashew Nuts, Stir Fried Vegetables, Sweet and Sour Pork. Everything was tasty and well-prepared. Breakfast was also very good. The selection wasn't the biggest but still had bread, cereal, eggs, pork sausages and ham, fried rice, fruit and 2 or 3 cooked Thai dishes. These dishes and the fried rice tasted great. Overall I was surprised by the quality of the food (maybe I had low expectations?).

Service

The staff were always nice and friendly, however several things went wrong during the 2 day stay. First on arrival when we were shown our rooms everyone had twin beds (rather than the doubles or kings that I was expecting). Wan and I had looked at and booked the rooms a fortnight earlier. The confusion arose because they have two types of rooms: Deluxe and Superior. I think we booked all Deluxe rooms, asking for double beds. But it turns out that Deluxe rooms are all twin-beds while Superior are doubles; other than that there is no difference in the rooms. I can't blame the hotel for this mixup; it was just very frustrating getting to the rooms and then having to wait around for 30 minutes in the corridor while they found some double rooms. For the first breakfast we arrived around 6am, but there was no food out. They told us breakfast started at 6am, but maybe that meant the workers arrived then! Eventually the food came. Finally, on check-out a staff member had trouble calculating our bill. When booking the rooms we paid a 50% deposit. We had the receipt saying how much paid, and hotel had a record as well. But the staff was sure that we hadn't paid 50% deposit on the suite as well, and wanted to charge an extra 1250 Baht. I spent a good half hour trying to explain how much we had to pay, showing the staff several times on the calculator and paper the amounts. It was as simple as sum up the total cost for all rooms and subtract the deposit. But still the staff could not work that out and insisted we hadn't paid the deposit for the suite. Eventually they found the original staff member that booked the rooms for us: she summed the total of the rooms, subtracted the deposit, and we paid the remaining and left.

Overall

Although I've got nothing to compare it against, if you are planning on staying in Chumphae then this hotel is ok. The rooms are ok, well priced and the food was very good. There is also a large swimming pool that I didn't try (others said it was ok), some karaoke rooms and massage. Despite a couple of problems with service, the staff were still friendly and helped when they could.

Created on Wed, 13 Jul 2011, 9:01pm

Last changed on Wed, 16 May 2012, 8:25pm