The first impression you get when you arrive is wow due to the amazing pool. This was my first trip overseas with my boyfriend and we loved every moment. The rooms were good, not extremely modern but still comfortable. Maids were excellent, and the staff were always friendly and would greet us with a smile. The restaurants are more expensive but that is what you get if you want to eat at a resort. Many people complain about the prices but everybody knows that resorts over charge. The Thai restaurant was excellent and the quality of the food was great. The Lobby had half price drinks at night which was good and the swim up bar was fun. It was overpriced though. There is a restaurant on the private beach which served great food and was cheap. Meals were about 150-200 Baht. The massage huts were cheap too, same price as in Patong. It is 3km's away from Patong, but with free shuttles it was easy to go down to the main centre. It would cost about 300 Baht to get back on a tuk tuk. It was a great resort, very quiet and it was lovely to be away from all the noise in Patong. Many people said it was hard to sleep in Patong due to the noise. Tri Trang beach is 150m away from the resort and has a few cheap restaurants which was helpful. Overall I enjoyed the resort, loved the pool, the service, the rooms and had a lovely time. I would go back in a heartbeat.

I had the pleasure of staying here in for a work trip. It is a great resort in my opinion, only approximately 5 minutes from Patong (costing approximately 300-400 baht in a TukTuk. The rooms themselves were very comfy, and clean! The resort has 3 pools, with swim up rooms to boot. A swim up bar is also in the main pool for all those Aussie's who love this idea! The property also caters for kids with a couple of kids clubs one especially for Sweedish citizen. A day spa is also available for guest. The breakfast here is quite tasty and I am sure you can find something to satisfy your hunger. You can also find a small convenience/sourvenier shop and gym in the resort as well as a couple of street vendors just outside. All in all a good place to stay and the staff are very friendly and willing to help you, I just love the Thai hospitality!

My wife and I spent a week at the Merlin Beach Resort at Tri-Trang Beach. We rated it as average and a breakdown of the positives and negatives are below:

Positives:
Location- Tri-Trang Beach is secluded, but only a couple of miles away from Patong Beach where all of the nightlife/bars/restaurants are. The resort has a free shuttle service to Patong Beach which is great if you want to hop over to peek at the craziness. This resort is perfect if you're looking for seclusion with an option to venture to a very intense night life scene that is a very short distance away; then this is your kind of place.

Swimming Pool- The resort has an enormous swimming pool so there is always a lot of space to kick back and relax even if there are a lot of vacationers at the hotel.

Cleanliness- Everything was very clean. We were especially impressed with how they manage to keep the gigantic swimming pool so clean.

Breakfast- A delicious breakfast spread which we looked forward to every night before we went to sleep!

Negatives:

Food/Restaurants- The restaurants on the property are very expensive and the food is not exceptional (i.e. not a lot of bang for the buck). Think "Western prices for sub-par taste." As I mentioned in the positives section, the breakfast buffet was great, but lunches and dinners (which have to be paid for) were not great at any of the restaurants and they were quite expensive. This factor greatly contributed to my overall rating of a three instead of a four.

Service at the restaurants- The servers seem to forget about you once they sit you down. They will come by one time to ask you for your order, then you will not see them again. They won't come by to ask if you would like another drink, or if you're meal is prepared to your expectations, or any other types of follow up questions. If you want ketchup with your hamburger and you forgot to mention it when the server brought your meal, be ready to walk around the restaurant looking for the missing condiment(s) yourself.

Conclusion:
The facilities are great, the location is wonderful, but the food and restaurants (including service at the restaurants) have a lot of room for improvement. If MBR could get the restaurant prices, food quality, and service at the restaurants figured out, this would be a 5 star resort.

The first impression of the hotel isn't great as there is a building site next door which on some days worked from 5:30am to 11:00pm and had I known this I would not have stayed here; thanks Virgin!

The resort is about 3km from Patong and it does say this on its website but it fails to mention that the 3km is over a hill which many vehicles have to resort to using first gear to climb due to the steepness and height! They do operate a shuttle bus about 5 times a day into town or a taxi will cost you between 250 and 300 baht each way.

Being out of the way the food and drinks are more expensive than in town or at the couple of nearby restaurants. The food was okay, lunch was pretty decent but we were disappointed with the food at the Thai and Italian restaurants. The restaurants always add 10% for service and to be honest if I was tipping it would not have been this high, or sometimes at all, as they were often very slow and tended to forget about you.

Pools were okay but the sun loungers had towels on them first thing in the morning so you needed to be up early to beat the others. I personally hate this behaviour but you are forced into it here!

Room was okay and cleaned daily but could do with some modernisation as it felt a little dated compared to newer hotels.

I would highly recommend the Little Tiger restaurant next door to the hotel if you want good Thai food.