The best hotels in Koh Samui, Thailand
From safari-style tents to private island villas and life-altering wellness retreats to splash parks and ball pits, the small Andaman island of Koh Samui in Thailand has it all when it comes to hotels. The island’s first five-star hotel opened here back in the mid-1980s, followed by a slow trickle of new openings to what exists today: Thailand’s most luxurious island, but also somewhere with hotels for virtually every type of traveller. And where there’s a beach, there’s now a palace to sleep – and drink and eat – right next to it.
Many of Samui’s most luxe places sit in the northeast corner, some with their own bays – some even on their own islands. And although it’s one of Thailand’s livelier destinations – with its bars, markets, massage parlours and impressive restaurant scene, you will still find serene stays. It’s also the start point for hops over to the islands of Koh Phangan and Koh Tao – but with Koh Samui hotels this good, you may not see the need to leave.
Four Seasons Koh Samui
It’s the island’s priciest place to stay (just shy of £1000 a night in the low season, and double that in high), but it is also the very best. A stay at Four Seasons Samui is like stepping into the White Lotus life – part of the reason why season three of the hit HBO series was reportedly filmed here. It’s easy to see why it was chosen – it’s serene and seriously photogenic, with 78 residences and villas cut into a steep jungly hillside (and former coconut plantation). Architect and interior designer Bill Bensley can take full credit for the stylish and lux feel, from the jazzy artwork to the very cool Coco Rum pool bar, where striped sofas line a palm-dotted pool with sea views beyond
Koh Thai, the open-air restaurant, has food as good as the views (handily, you don’t have to stay to eat here). It’s the same spot for breakfast, where an incredible French pastry chef prepares the most delicious matcha madeleines, vanilla brioche and chocolate financiers – every morning is a surprise. There’s a spa, of course, there is, with treatments using Thai herbal products, a breezy outdoor yoga pavilion and a small kid’s club in a treehouse. Snorkel offshore, laze on a lounger the size of a super-king bed on the beach or sip spirits in the rum vault (one of the many drinking spots) before a lantern-lit meal on the beach.
Anantara Lawana
Couples and families mingle happily together at Anantara Lawana, a resort-style hotel located close to the nightlife of Chaweng on Samui’s east coast. Sociable types should go for one of the standard bedrooms, located in the soft grey two-storey Thai-style houses. For sunshine? You’ll need to head to the buzzy pool or beach, a great spot for a paddle at low tide or a proper swim at high tide, when colourful long-tail boats bob on the water just along the shore.
Those seeking quiet may prefer the private pool villas – with their tiled floors and traditional dark wooden furniture, including four poster beds, they feel very grown up. The spa is another sanctuary in the hotel, where discreet therapists deliver back-crunching bamboo massages and ayurvedic Shirodhara therapy. Crab Shack is your sand-between-the-toes sunset cocktail spot, while Tree Tops, built in a treehouse-style wooden structure wrapped around a century-old tree, is the hotel’s romantic dining option (book early to catch the sunset here). The kids club is a hive of activity, with wooden tractors and play kitchens.
Address: 92 1, Tambon Bo Put, Ko Samui District, Surat Thani 84320, Thailand
- ATIT/SIRIPRAROB
Cape Fahn
One of Samui’s best – and most luxurious – places to bed down isn’t actually on Samui, but even better: a private island around 100 metres offshore (you’ll be whisked there and back in a small speedboat or glorified tractor depending on the tide levels). Here, you’ll find 24 villas, from Ocean Cottages to two-bed family villas, all with private pools where you can snooze to the sound of birdsong and gently lapping waves.
All other spaces are pure bliss, too: like the breakfast terrace views and the peaceful, sun-soaked adjoining room, not just because of its pretty canary yellow cushions and bamboo-style chairs, but for its spread of pastries, baked in house; or Hue restaurant, where you can gaze out past the pin-stripe loungers, pool and palms to the shimmering sea beyond. Long Dtai, overseen by Michelin-recognised chef David Thompson, is worth a visit even if you can’t stay here: not just for the panoramic views over the turquoise Andaman, which are arguably some of the best restaurant views on the island, but for the menu: the Southern egg curry being a highlight. Despite being one of the Samui’s most expensive stays, it’s also one of the most relaxed: where retired business owners wander the same winding paths around the small island as young honeymooners.
- RALF TOOTEN
Kamalaya
To call Kamalaya a hotel wouldn’t be doing it justice: yes, there are hotel rooms and villas dotted across this bougainvillaea-draped hillside on the island’s quieter south coast, but at the heart of this sanctuary is a focus on wellness, both physical and mental. Most guests here book in on dedicated programmes, whether it’s detoxes and cleanses or programmes such as Embracing Change, in which you’ll spend time with Life Enhancement Mentors, unravelling past trauma with talking therapy and meditation. Treatments – many of them ayuverdic – are all tailored to your issues, with acupuncture and heavenly massages. The site is built around a 300-year-old mediation cave, which you can still use today, plus there’s walking meditation, yoga and a peaceful stretch of sand for late-afternoon siestas. Solo travellers here may like the communal dining, where everyone from opera singers to burnt out CEOs gather to knock back green juices at breakfast and feast on sugar-free curries in the evening, but you’d also feel entirely comfortable dining solo, reading a book over meals, or simply gazing out at the water.
Address: 3 102 Laem-Set Rd, Tambon Na Mueang, Ko Samui District, Surat Thani 84140, Thailand
Kapuhala
Travellers gather for days to months to work from their laptops, live well and eat well at Kapuhala, a boutique hotel that has the relaxed vibe of an Airbnb. Food is central to a stay here – a small but perfect menu of Sicilian plant-based recipes (Kapuhala’s second outpost is on the Italian island), features delicious spaghetti soy ragu and light arancini, all topped with pipettes of extra virgin olive oil, with the olives plucked and pressed at their Sicily property. Breakfast, meanwhile, is a feast of fruit and freshly baked muffins and strong Italian coffee.
You can venture high up the hill in Chaweng Noi on a moped for a meal, but then you’d miss what makes this place so special: easing into your day in the open air restaurant space, with its swaying rattan lamps and hessian bean bags, getting to know the friendly team and feeling inspired by the island’s remote working views across the infinity pool and over the sea below. Choose from four simple light-filled ‘tiny houses’ or one of five large safari-style tents, where the sides fold up so the breeze can flow in while you gaze out.
Address: Kapuhala, Bo Put, Ko Samui District, Surat Thani 84310, Thailand
Ritz Carlton
This sprawling hotel, built across 58 hilly acres in a former coconut plantation, works hard to impress – and delivers. Kids will be overjoyed at the island’s best kids club: a huge light-filled space of ball pits, slides and toys, with an outdoor crazy golf course and playpark. For adults there’s the Spa Village, which is indeed a village – with eight standalone treatment rooms (try the pre-spa Songkran Spa Ritual) and a large barely-used adult-only pool dotted with cabanas.
The View serves up some of the island’s highest sea views alongside creative tasting menus, while Baan Talta is modelled on a Thai street food market, but there are several more options should you dine here each night. A Muay Thai boxing ring, basketball and tennis courts are great if you get restless, while a beautiful beach of cream-coloured sand and a large curvy pool if you long to just laze. There are 175 bedrooms, suites and villas, but oceanfront pool villas have the real wow factor: outdoor decks and infinity pools, you can gaze over the edge and see nothing but turquoise water and hear nothing but the waves meeting the rocks below.
Address: Ritz Carlton, 9, 123 Tambon, Bo Put, Amphoe Ko Samui, Surat Thani 84320, Thailand
- Nicolas Voisin
Samujana
Twenty-three contemporary villas, cut into a meticulously landscaped flower-filled slope on the north-east of the island, every one staggeringly luxurious and big on views: strictly speaking Samujana isn’t a hotel, but it operates very much like one, with added privacy and space, making it particularly popular with large groups of family and friends.
Unlike a lot of villa stays, you won’t need to lift a finger: breakfast is provided in the villa every morning, rooms are made up and turned down, and there are team members on hand to rustle up meals. It’s hard to choose the best: perhaps it’s villa 12, with its own boxing gym, basketball court, games room and cinema room, or maybe the ludicrously photogenic villa 30, with 360-degree views and the country's best infinity pool – a serious accolade when the competition is fierce. Others, with their sun-flooded open-plan open-air communal areas, large pools and calm-inducing minimalist styling are so lovely that you could happily lose a week or two here, never venturing out at all.
Address: Samujana, Plai Laem, Plai Leam Soi 11, Surat Thani, Amphoe Ko Samui, Surat Thani 84320, Thailand
Kimpton Kitalay
Choeng Mon beach, with its fire shows, jet skis and beach bars, sets the tone for Kimpton Kitalay, a buzzy hotel in Samui’s north. It’s built in the style of a fisherman’s village, with six, low-rise blocks of rooms wrapped in dark wood. You can bed down in two-bed villas, but entry level rooms are large and stylish, with Victorian-style tiles, curvy freestanding bathtubs and jazzy blue rugs.
The main pool is a sociable spot, as is the splash park and kids club, but there’s always a quieter place to escape to – especially if you opt for a swim up suite on the ‘quiet’ side, or book time in the spa. There are four restaurants and bars, and if you tire of Thai food, Fish House serves excellent steak and huge sides, plus fresh-off-the-boat fish. You may spot one or two dogs strolling the grounds: the hotel works with a local rescue dog charity, and dogs that are up for adoption visit every fortnight to meet guests.
Address: Kimpton Kitalay, 10, Bo Put, Ko Samui District, Surat Thani 84320, Thailand
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Garrya Tongsai Bay Samui
There are plenty of lovely beaches on Samui, but Tongsai Bay? This curve of golden sand, with its gently tumbling turquoise waves, feels impossible to beat – and, unless you’re willing to paddle in by kayak, it’s only accessible to Garrya guests. The hotel that opened here back in the mid-80s was the first five-star resort on the island and has been welcoming loyal guests, some of them as many as 20 times, since.
A recent rebrand to a Garrya resort has kept some of the much-loved elements of the hotel, like outdoor bathtubs, and refreshed others: high-ceilinged rooms are simple yet luxurious, with calming beige and burnt orange palette and varnished wooden floors. There’s a spa, breezy outdoor massage cabanas set inches from the waves and three restaurants, including beachside dining at Fish Tales (don’t miss the vegan chocolate ice cream), and Evo, where much of the food is made with produce taken from the hotel’s garden. Then there are decisions to make – the half-moon adults-only pool, the curvy beach-level pool, or a spot on the beach itself…
Address: Garrya Tongsai Bay Samui, 84 Moo 5, Bophut, Koh Samui Suratthani 84320, Thailand
Six Senses Samui
One of the most sustainable stays on Samui is on a sloping jungle-clad headland on the island’s northeastern tip. The bamboo walls and high thatched roofs of 66 multi-level villas (most with private pools) give the feeling of staying in a luxe treehouse.
The vibe is chic, yet fun: natural wood tones are combined with pops of colour from the neon-green and sherbet-yellow cushions and loungers, and staff stroll around in Millennial pink and dusty rose linen two pieces. The first is quiet (one of the island’s best and biggest infinity pools), the other buzzier and next to the beach, on a cove shared with neighbouring hotels – one of the only clues that you’re on a popular island rather than a remote hideaway. Mornings start with a shot of ‘rocket fuel’ (cider vinegar and citrus) at breakfast, and there’s an excellent menu of mocktails, free ice cream and several scenic restaurant options, where fragrant curries are served up next to sunset views (although the best views at sunset are from the spa). Little and large guests love the on-site farm, where they can pet and feed a herd of well-preened goats.
Address: Six Senses Samui, 9/10 หมู่ที่ 5, Ko Samui District, Surat Thani 84320, Thailand
Silavadee Resort
Young honeymooning couples and equally loved-up retirees happily mingle at Silavadee, a boutique resort built across a hillside on a quiet peninsula on the east coast of Samui. Although the entry-level rooms are pretty, with their outdoor jacuzzis and airy interiors, if you’re staying here it should be an Ocean Front Pool Villa. Our pick? Number three: with its separate living room, freestanding bathtub, huge bedroom and even bigger pool, you could happily spend your entire stay in the privacy of your villa, floating in your pool or gazing out at miles and miles of empty sea. There’s a simple spa where efficient therapists expertly deliver tension-relieving Thai massages, and the two open-air dining spots are both romantic and well-priced (the wine pairings, in particular, are generous and a steal). Lively Lamai beach is a short scooter ride away, or if that’s too taxing, you’ll find some of the best snorkelling on the island right off the hotel’s quiet curve of beach – handily, for guests, it’s a small cove
that’s near impossible for anyone else on the island to access.Address: Silavadee Resort, 208/66 Ko Samui District, Surat Thani 84310, Thailand