Sofitel Or Hilton?

[Captain Chaos]

My parents are coming over from the UK to spend Christmas & New Yr in Thailand. I'm planning to drive them down to Hua Hin for a week or so. I've narrowed my search down to the Sofitel or the Hilton. Both very nice looking hotels, but obviously quite different in style. My parents are in their 60's so I'm leaning a little towards the Sofitel. Price is not an issue for this trip, except that I'm too much of a cheap charlie to have stayed in either before so have no first hand experience!

Could anyone make any suggestions based on the above (apart from that I should be less "keeniow jing jing" of course!

Thanks.

[Wellington]

My parents are coming over from the UK to spend Christmas & New Yr in Thailand. I'm planning to drive them down to Hua Hin for a week or so. I've narrowed my search down to the Sofitel or the Hilton. Both very nice looking hotels, but obviously quite different in style. My parents are in their 60's so I'm leaning a little towards the Sofitel. Price is not an issue for this trip, except that I'm too much of a cheap charlie to have stayed in either before so have no first hand experience! 

Could anyone make any suggestions based on the above (apart from that I should be less "keeniow jing jing" of course! 

Thanks.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sofitel has advantage in far nicer garden,more space,and better food;

also likely to have a goodly number of Brits staying as definately popular with over 60's. A stylish older hotel but suggest the new garden wing where the rooms are a tad bigger. The Hilton is more "package Toury" by t he busloads.

an alternative worth looking at is the relatively new Veranda Resort half way between Hua Hin and Cha Am, but not so easy if you want to promenade in the evenings and walk to the excellent fish restaurants on the peirs

[tripperj]

I stayed in the hilton in june for a couple of days and i could not fault it. i got a really good deal on asiarooms.com, about 1500 a night, when i looked up the hilton group site the room was £95 (about 6650bt) a night. I know you said money is not a problem but, look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.

[Kan Win]

I vote for Sofitel.

Just to let you know it is "Compulsory New Year's Eve Dinner" (Great Spread BTW. Christmas Eve not sure if that is as well.

Your parents will really enjoy their stay in this hotel.

Happy Days

Yours truly,

Kan Win

[Dara]

My parents are coming over from the UK to spend Christmas & New Yr in Thailand. I'm planning to drive them down to Hua Hin for a week or so. I've narrowed my search down to the Sofitel or the Hilton. Both very nice looking hotels, but obviously quite different in style. My parents are in their 60's so I'm leaning a little towards the Sofitel. Price is not an issue for this trip, except that I'm too much of a cheap charlie to have stayed in either before so have no first hand experience! 

Could anyone make any suggestions based on the above (apart from that I should be less "keeniow jing jing" of course! 

Thanks.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you can have the choice, take a suite on the 15th floor of the Hilton - it will accommodate 3 people - a separate bedroom with a sofa bed in the living room. The view is breath-taking and the wrap-around varanda is really large. The breakfast is okay - lots of choices, and there are some specialties that are pretty good. The spa is also a nice feature.

You can walk over to the Sofitel for a stroll, drinks (great terrace by the sea), tea (on their veranda) or a meal (don't know about the food - never tried it, but the restaurant looks cozy) - I think that they also have a club with a jazz band on some nights.

The whole area is a bit touristy - with cheap tourist gift shops, bars, etc - but it's convenient to walk around. The weather during that time should be generally good...

[Bredbury Blue]

I’ve recently been through this decision making process myself, back in June, when I had my folks over (they’re in their 70’s) and we needed to choose between those hotels for a 4 day visit of my parents, my wife (Thai) and I and our toddler and baby. We’re very familiar with Hua Hin but as we’re usually in the area biking (MTB) we stay cheap. We’d stayed in the Hilton before and found it excellent and we’d been for breakfast twice at the Sofitel (best breakfast in Thailand?). In the end we booked a two bedroom bungalow at Central Village which is part of the Sofitel and it was an excellent choice. The Village is relatively cheap and far the cheaper of the 3; it was great for us as it had two beds and a seating area so our older boy could run around mental while baby was sleeping. In all honesty if you stay at the Village, you save money and you spend all your time over at the sister-hotel Sofitel for breakfast, use of their 4 pools, their kiddies playroom etc. I also agree with the comment that the Hilton is a bit of a package hotel. We liked the Village and the Sofitel so much that we’ve been back since and we’ve joined their Gold Card club as we intend returning on a regular basis. So if it’s a straight choice between the Hilton and the Sofitel definitely go for the latter, but if you’d like to take the smart option stay at the Village. Oh and if you’ll have any kids with you then it’s definitely not the high rise Hilton.

[Captain Chaos]

Thanks for all the useful input so far guys. To be honest, if it was just me & the missus (30 somethings) we'd probably have gone for the Hilton. Prefer the slightly livelier feel. I think my parents would probably appreciate the colonial feel of the Sofitel so have made that my first choice booking. Obviously it's going to be busy at that time of year so may end up in the Hilton anyway. My travel agent up here in BKK is working on it at the moment.

I did consider the Central Village, having had a bit of a look around it on one of our previous trips to HH. I rather liked it but my father said he didn't want cabin style accomodation this time (did that last year on Samui) so it was out for this trip.

Thanks again for the help. Any more comments more than welcome.

[Bredbury Blue]

Quick tip.

1. If between now and when you go there is one of those travel shows at the Queen sirikit you can get cheap vouchers there for the Central hotels like sofitel HH. Also do a search on the Sofitel for reviews, i did recently and read some bad comments about one of their wings, i think it was the railway wing not the colonial wing but i'm not 100% on that.

2. When going to HH these days the bi-pass road surface is ratshit, far better and quicker to go through Cha-am as daft as that sounds.