Conrad Koh Samui Review: Private Pool Villa, Resort and Breakfast

Update, October 2026

• I’ve combined my two 2014 posts on this stay into one page. The second half, on the resort, breakfast and room service, starts at Part 2 below.
• The resort is still a Conrad, and a 2023 review describes the same thing that made my stay: every villa has its own private pool.
• The points prices here (50,000 a night when I booked, 80,000 to 95,000 when I wrote this) are from 2014. Check the Hilton app for your dates.
• The Citi Hilton Reserve card I recommend below no longer exists: Citi’s Hilton cards became American Express cards in January 2018.
• Hilton’s member benefits page says Gold and Diamond members get a complimentary continental breakfast at select brands outside the US, so confirm how the Conrad handles it when you book.

I was coming to the Conrad after a two night stay at the InterContinental so I arranged transportation for the ride over. The two hotels are only about a 15 minute drive apart so it’s a good way to combine nights with two hotel programs if you’re looking for a long getaway.

How I Booked the Room

Early last year, Hilton announced a massive devaluation of their points program. Thankfully they at least gave a bit of a warning, so I used the 100K Hilton points I had in my account at the time to book two nights (50K each at the time) at this hotel. I booked it about 10 months in advance to get good availability and made sure it was the Winter to get good weather.

This hotel now goes for between 80K and 95K points per night, but getting Hilton points isn’t all that hard. There are multiple credit cards they offer, many with no fee and with bonuses between 40K and 75K. You can also get the Hilton Honors reserve card for two free weekend nights, and an additional free night after $10K spending. The Reserve Card is the way to go in my opinion since it gives you Gold status (and thus free breakfast) along with the two nights. The $95 fee is worth it, but there’s now an offer for a statement credit that will make the fee disappear.

Review

Just as with the InterContinental, the lobby of the Conrad Koh Samui was open air with a spectacular view of the ocean. There was a huge fountain outside and only a few seats inside, but that wasn’t really a big deal considering how few hotel guests there actually are.

We were asked to take a seat facing the ocean while our documents were prepared. We were given a cold tea drink and cold towel to enjoy while we waited, and the drink was actually so good that I asked for another. After a short time we were brought to the main desk to receive our room keys and an overview of the resort, but check-in was actually completed in the room.

This resort is a bit unique because of how it’s built. The resort is built on a huge cliff, and each room is its own villa with no common walls and stands on huge stilts to allow each villa a proper view of the ocean. Because of this design, the main path around the resort has extremely steep inclines that zig zag from left to right. This means that it’s too far to walk comfortably, so instead the hotel employs an army of free, on-demand golf carts for guests to get around the property. That’s how we were taken to our villa, which was villa 117 (the lowest row of villas).

The room was very spacious and very well appointed. It’s certainly the nicest beach resort room that I’ve ever had, and you can easily see why the hotel gets such rave reviews. There was a King size bed that faced the “backyard” and overlooked the ocean, and was perfectly positioned to view the sunset. In front of the bed was a sitting area with a small couch, coffee table, and a 42” TV. To the side of the bed was a work desk with the massively over-priced spa menu.

The bed itself was very comfortable, and in the middle of the room was a ceiling fan. It does get warm, but there’s really no need to turn on the fan if you know how to use a thermostat. There were wood floors throughout the bedroom and the whole room just felt comfy.

The bathroom was even more impressive than the bedroom, and just about as spacious. The double sinks were situated between the tub and the shower, and the massive tub had an equally amazing view of the ocean as the bedroom did. Hanging next to the tub were two bathrobes and a small TV in case the ocean view gets a little boring. The shower featured a rain shower head along with the standard shower head and was very large and covered entirely in marble. Even the shower had a glimpse of the ocean between the two mirrors above the sinks.

Adjacent to the shower was the toilet which was behind a glass door. On the other side of the shower was a walk-in closet with space for luggage and a safe. The closet was bigger than any other hotel closet I can recall.

The star of the villa was the backyard, which featured not just amazing views of the ocean and nearby islands, but also a huge, private, 30-foot-long infinity pool. This backyard comes complete with two lounge chairs with towels and an umbrella shade and, in case you don’t like to lounge, there are regular chairs and seats on the other side.

The pool, and the whole villa, is designed with privacy in mind. You can’t really see into any of the villas next door (unless you really tried hard) and the only way someone could catch a glimpse of you is if they were on the villa level above and chose to look down from the edge of their pool, and even that’s a long ways away. Basically, you have as private of a room and personal pool as you can hope for aside from an overwater bungalow.

The room was amazing, and in a place like this you’re likely ordering room service for most of your meals. Given that, there’s really only a few reasons to leave your room: the “private” island, which I’ll mention in part 2, the fitness center, and hotel restaurant/spa. Otherwise, you have your own pool overlooking the ocean so don’t really need to make use of the community pool. There isn’t much of a beach at this resort either, so there’s no point in going out there besides to check it out.

Oh, and when the sun finally sets and darkness falls, you’ll want to be back in your room. Don’t forget that you’re on a tropical island with all kinds of bugs out there, and your “backyard” pool area is most definitely not immune to them. Once it was dark, the creepy crawlies were out and about just outside our door. You definitely will get mosquito bites if you’re hanging outside for too long at night!

Note that I explained the significant differences between the InterContinental Samui and Conrad Koh Samui in a previous post in case you’re trying to decide which is more appropriate for your stay. I plan on doing a full review of the InterContinental Samui Ban resort soon as well.

I’ll discuss the rest of the resort including the “private” island, beach, community pool, fitness center, and breakfast in Part 2.

Part 2: The Resort, Breakfast and Room Service

In Part 1 of my Conrad Koh Samui review I described the check-in process and room, and mentioned that I think there’s very little reason to leave the room except for a few specific instances. I’ll describe the things the resort has to offer to better explain my thought process.

Beach, Pool, and Fitness Center

The Conrad Koh Samui doesn’t have much of a beach because its coast is lined with mostly rocks. There are a few places where you can lounge on the little bit of sand they do have, but don’t expect to have much fun at this beach. I also noticed the wooden pier that I’ve seen in so many pictures wasn’t here, which was kind of a bummer. Still, the colorful water made for some great pics!

The community pool isn’t huge, but is still very nice. The infinity pool overlooks the ocean and has lounge chairs both inside the pool (in just a few inches of water – see pics) and outside for those looking for a tan. Just behind the pool is a bar/café in case you’re interested in grabbing a drink or some food. As a Hilton Diamond member, I received two drink certificates that could be used at this bar. I decided to have one of my meals here and deeply regretted it as it was probably the worst meal I had during my stay. The people working here at the time didn’t exactly seem motivated to work either as they probably saw a grand total of one person per hour.

I actually had a chance to meet Mark Palmer, who writes the law-based blog Travel Blawg on BoardingArea. He happened to be at the resort at the same time so I met him for drinks near the pool. If you’re interested in the business/law aspect of travel and haven’t checked out his blog, I recommend it!

The fitness center was just downstairs from the pool and was just as empty as everywhere else around the resort. There was a good selection of equipment, and the one employee that was there mentioned that there were free fitness activities (yoga, volleyball, etc.) every day of the week. I didn’t take advantage of this since I was here for only 2 nights, but I think it’s a great service to offer.

“Private” Island

One of the unique selling points of this resort is that they can take you to a private island for free via speedboat. I was excited to see what it was all about, so I booked a ride for the island in the afternoon. The meeting point for the ride over was the lobby, and while I was waiting I talked for a bit with the guy who owns the boat company that the Conrad contracts to take people.

I asked specifically about what happened to the wooden pier I mentioned earlier. He told me that when the pier was built, it was built to the standards of a pier for a lake, so the crashing currents of the ocean deteriorated the pier to the point where they had to just remove it. That’s quite the oversight!

Anyway, we were taken on a 10 minute car ride down to the ocean where the speed boat was waiting. I jumped on the boat and we were cast off. The captain had some trouble with the engine, so we kept drifting into the ocean as he kept trying to start it. A few minutes of engine trouble turned into about 30 minutes of us just floating further into the ocean, and I was legitimately worried about if the thing would ever get started. After popping the engine open and knocking things around, we finally got the boat and our journey started.

The ride to the island took about 20 minutes. The water was choppy and the boat was bouncing quite vigorously as we were moving pretty fast. When we got to the island it was clear that it was definitely not private. There were plenty of other boats parked there and people in the water, and worse there was quite a bit of trash and other debris along the shoreline (only a small portion of the island is available to walk on). Most of the island smelled terrible actually. There isn’t much to see and there was absolutely nothing to do, so we went back towards the boat after our short expedition along the shoreline.

The two guys that brought us there laid out large towels under the trees for me and my friend and provided us with water bottles. We sat down on them and quickly found out there were plenty of ants and other creatures around us, both on sand and falling from the trees, and we decided it wasn’t really worth sticking around. We asked the guys to head back and they obliged…and that was our “private” island experience.

If there was a positive to take away from this experience, it was that we took a different route to get back that happened to take us right by the Conrad resort. It was quite a view to see how the hotel was built along the cliffs with all the stilts clearly visible.

If you plan on staying at this hotel, I do not recommend you take the ride to the private island. It’s simply not worth it, except for the view of the entire resort on the return.

Breakfast

Hilton HHonors Gold and Diamond members are given a breakfast for free as part of their benefits (Diamonds only get the free drink certificates I mentioned in Part 1 as an extra benefit). If you don’t have Gold or Diamond status, I don’t recommend staying at this hotel because of the significant cost you’re sure to incur with all the food purchases. Thankfully Gold status is easy enough to get – I recommend the Hilton Reserve credit card from Citi that provides 2 free weekend nights (can be used at this property) and Gold Status just for having the card.

As you might expect, breakfast came with an amazing view. There was a choice of sitting either inside or outside, and really you might as well just sit outside to enjoy the ambiance of it all. The breakfast area is mostly shaded and the birds are not bothersome.

The breakfast spread was pretty good, something I was very glad for considering the high food prices elsewhere on the resort. There were all the standard breakfast items you’d expect at a breakfast buffet like fruits and yogurt, snacks, bread and pastries, and a salad bar. Additionally, hot foods included an omelet bar and local foods like Thai noodles, rice, curry, and other meat/vegetable dishes. The spread was good, but definitely not the best I’ve seen a hotel.

Believe it or not, my favorite part of the spread was the fresh smoothies and juices. I had a chance to talk to the executive chef and I mentioned how delicious they were, and he said the guava juice was the most popular (and it was definitely my favorite) and that they only made a handful of the smoothies/juices in the morning. If you want the good stuff, you have to get there early before they’re gone!

If you’re looking to save money while you’re at the resort, I recommend having a late breakfast to make it more of a brunch. That way you hopefully only need to order one more meal in the evening before bed time.

Room Service

Room service was an adventure. There’s a few options to get food outside the resort but it can be tough to arrange that, so eating at the resort is easiest. The prices are definitely higher because of that convenience as well. In general, I’d say you should expect to pay $20-$35 per dish. I suggest sticking with the Thai food, but there might be some Western options that are good as well. My friend and I found the Curry dishes to be very good, while some of the rice and noodle dishes were quite bland.

One of these meals is usually pretty small by American standards, so an appetizer, dessert, or smoothie might be worth considering to help fill you up, especially if you have a day filled with swimming or other activities!

Overall Impressions

The Conrad Koh Samui Resort is one of the best properties I’ve ever visited, mostly because of the room and private infinity pool in the backyard. It’s rare to have a hotel room that is so great that it’s almost not worth leaving, and even rarer that it’s the standard room at a property. I think this is a perfect resort for a honeymoon or romantic getaway as you’re afforded the privacy that you likely want.

On the other hand, I don’t really suggest doing what I did – spending just 2 nights here and spending them with a friend. The resort caters to couples and is pretty romantic, so while spending them with a friend is fine, it’s not really what this property was built for.

Two nights simply isn’t enough for how great this hotel is. If you’re coming all the way out here, stack nights from your and your significant other’s HHonors Reserve card to get 3 nights (Friday to Sunday night since you can only use them on weekends) and use points for the fourth and additional nights. I think 4 nights is an appropriate minimum amount of time to stay here.

I think the only way to top this resort experience is to get an over-water bungalow, and even those have drawbacks because of the unique way those properties are built. This is as excellent as an option there is for a romantic getaway in my opinion!

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