We spent the last night of our Bangkok trip at the Pullman Bangkok King Power, having moved from the Grand Mercure Bangkok Atrium where we’d stayed the previous two nights. The idea was to stay somewhere a bit nicer towards the end of our trip, and to find out whether Pullman Bangkok King Power is worth it for US$105 a night, which is double of what we paid for at our previous hotel.
Honestly, it does, and I’ll get into the specifics. The short version is that the gap between these two properties is wider than the price difference suggests. We took a Grab across in mid-afternoon traffic, which was quite heavy, and it took about 30 minutes for a journey that looks much shorter on a map.
Location
The hotel sits on Rangnam Road in Ratchathewi, directly next door to the King Power Rangnam duty-free building, which is where it gets its name. If you’ve got last-minute shopping to do before flying out, you can walk there in under a minute.
Victory Monument on the BTS Sukhumvit Line is about a four-minute walk at Exit 2, which is much closer than the BTS station at Phaya Thai. Phaya Thai on the Airport Rail Link is roughly 8 to 10 minutes on foot, and from there it’s a direct train to Suvarnabhumi. Siam is also three stops away, which puts the whole shopping district within a short ride from this property.
Having just written about the Grand Mercure and its walk to the trains, the contrast is worth drawing properly. Both hotels are technically near an Airport Rail Link station. This one is more convenient when you have luggages in tow, and we’ve seen a few groups of families doing the same.
The hotel also runs a complimentary tuk-tuk shuttle to the nearby stations, which nobody told us about and which we never saw anyone using. Ask at reception if you want it, because you won’t stumble across it on your own.
Check-in
The lobby is the first sign you’re somewhere different. It’s a large, well-composed space with a carved teak feature wall behind the reception desks, a mural running along one side, and a royal portrait with offerings near the entrance. There’s a generous amount of lounge seating scattered about, clearly meant for people waiting for their rooms or their rides, though we didn’t have to use it at all.
As Accor ALL Platinum members, we weren’t checked in downstairs at all. We were taken straight up to the Executive Lounge and checked in there, which is a considerably more civilised way to start a stay than standing at a counter in a lobby.
We were given orange juice and chilled towels while it was sorted. The juice was the cordial kind rather than freshly squeezed, which I did notice, though after a Bangkok afternoon the cold towel was the part I actually cared about.
We were also told we’d been upgraded to an Executive King Room on the same floor as the lounge, facing the pool. Being on the lounge floor is a small practical thing that adds up over a stay, particularly when you’re going back and forth for happy hour.
The room
The Executive King Room measures 32 sqm, which is an average size rather than a generous one, but the layout uses it well.
You come in through a short entry corridor and the room opens up in front of you. There is a seating corner by the floor-to-ceiling window, which is where the welcome amenities had been left, including a bottle of wine. The window looks out over the pool and gardens, and on a high floor that is a far better outlook than the construction site we had been looking at for the previous two nights.
The bed was comfortable, with controls built into the bedside panel for the lights and curtains.
The hotel also does a proper turndown service in the evening, which had been done by the time we came back up from the lounge. This has quietly disappeared from a lot of hotels in this bracket, so finding it here was a pleasant surprise, and it is one of the things that separates this property from the Grand Mercure we had come from.
On the bedside tray there was a pillow menu and a handwritten welcome note. The pillow menu covers a proper range of options rather than the usual soft-or-firm choice, and while we did not order anything from it, the fact that it exists at all tells you something about how the hotel is positioning itself.
The pantry area holds a Nespresso machine with cups, Chang drinking water in glass bottles, some Thai snacks, and a minibar. The minibar is not complimentary, so read the price list before you open anything.
The wardrobe is the detail I enjoyed most in the room, and it is the sort of thing you only notice once you have used it. It opens from both the bedroom side and the bathroom side, so you can get to the safe, slippers, iron and umbrella from wherever you happen to be standing. It is a genuinely clever piece of design and I do not know why more hotels have not worked this out.
The bathroom has a separate bathtub and a walk-in rain shower, with the toilet seat partitioned off on its own. The vanity has a backlit mirror, and the whole bathroom is fairly open to the bedroom, with a sightline running through to the bed. If that is not what you want, it can be closed off, so it is a choice rather than a design you are stuck with.
Bathroom amenities are from C.O. Bigelow, the New York apothecary brand, which is a step up from what you normally find at this price point in Bangkok.
Executive lounge
The lounge is on the same floor as our room, and the first thing you notice is the glass. Floor-to-ceiling windows run along the outer wall, looking out over Ratchaprarop and the Airport Rail Link line below. It is not a skyline view in the postcard sense, but watching the trains run past the city at dusk is a better way to spend an hour than most hotel lounges offer.
Evening canapés
The evening canapés are where the lounge earns its place. There is a proper drinks menu rather than a bottle of wine and a shrug, and a cocktail station where the drinks are made for you.
The evening canapés were more substantial than the word canapés implies. The hot dishes included prawn fried rice, pad thai and stir-fried vegetables on one side, and roast chicken with gravy with brussels sprouts and sides on the other. The chilled display carried cold cuts, a cheese corner, sushi and desserts.
The selection on offer was not enormous, and we went in at the tail end of the service with the lounge around 70% full, so some things had been picked over by the time we arrived. That said, there was more than enough to make a meal of it, and we did exactly that rather than going out for dinner on our last night.
If you are staying on an executive room rate, this is the part that justifies it. Between happy hour drinks and enough food to skip dinner, the gap between an executive room and a standard one closes very quickly.
Facilities
Fitness centre
The gym is well equipped for its size, with a Life Fitness Synrgy360 rig and multiple cardio machines. It is small, and on a busy morning I imagine you would be waiting for things, but everything in it is in good condition.
Coming from the Grand Mercure, where the gym was large and the pool was small, this is the reverse arrangement.
Pool
The pool is the best facility here by some distance, and it is what we enjoyed most on our final day. It is an infinity pool set among planted islands and frangipani trees, with a jacuzzi, and one elevated section is glass-walled so you can see through it from the garden below. The whole thing is very nicely done.
Gardens
What makes it work is the setting. The property is arranged as two parts: the main tower where our room was, and lower units wrapped around the gardens. Down in the courtyard, there are lily ponds and lotus, and looking down on it from above you would not immediately guess you are in a hotel.
The hotel describes itself as a resort in the city, which is the sort of line I would normally skip past. In this case the gardens and the pool do enough to back it up.
Breakfast
Breakfast is at Cuisine Unplugged, and it was excellent. This was the single biggest difference between the two Bangkok hotels we stayed at, and it is not close.
The dining room is hung with Japanese banners, and the Japanese leaning runs through the whole spread rather than being confined to one counter. There is a proper Japanese section with a marble dining bar, and a sushi and maki display that would not embarrass a dedicated restaurant.
There is a live wok and grill counter, an eggs station, and a separate made-to-order omelette station, so anything cooked comes out fresh rather than sitting in a tray.
The hot items covers hash browns, stir-fried vegetables and sausages for the Western side, with a dedicated Thai station carrying curries, dishes in bamboo steamers, noodles, stir-fries and a selection of condiments.
The cold and lighter end is handled properly too, with juices and yoghurt, cereals, granola and dried fruit in jars, and a chiller of cheese and cold cuts.
Pastries include croissants, danishes and baguettes, and there is a waffle and pancake station with the tea selection alongside. The Thai tea is brewed fresh at its own cart, which is nice to see.
Membership benefits
The more interesting benefit here isn’t an Accor one at all. The hotel gives guests complimentary tickets to the Mahanakhon SkyWalk, given that King Power owns both the Rangnam complex next door and King Power Mahanakhon across town.
It’s worth understanding what you’re being given, because it isn’t small. The SkyWalk is the observation deck at the top of King Power Mahanakhon, with an indoor deck on the 74th floor and the rooftop on the 78th, where there’s a glass floor 310 metres up and an open viewpoint at 314 metres. It’s open 10am to midnight with last access at 11pm.
The catch is the distance, and it’s worth being accurate about how you get there, because the building is nowhere near the hotel. It’s the BTS rather than the MRT: from Victory Monument you ride the Sukhumvit Line to Siam, change to the Silom Line, and get off at Chong Nonsi, leaving by Exit 3. Reckon on half an hour door to door once you’ve added the walks at both ends. That’s an easy trip if you’re planning an evening out in Silom or Sathorn anyway, and a bit of a trek if you’re not.
As Accor ALL members, we also had drinks vouchers to use, and I have to report that we simply forgot about them. One night is a short stay, and between the pool, the lounge happy hour and a packed day, we just never had the time. Learn from our mistake and use them on arrival.
Concluding thoughts
The Pullman Bangkok King Power cost us roughly double what we paid at the Grand Mercure Bangkok Atrium, and having done both back to back, I think it was the better value of the two.
That sounds contradictory, so let me be specific. The breakfast at Cuisine Unplugged is in a different category altogether, particularly the Japanese section and the live stations. The pool and gardens are a genuine facility rather than something to tick off a list. The Executive Lounge happy hour was substantial enough to replace dinner. There is a turndown service, which fewer and fewer hotels at this level still bother with. And the location works properly, with both the BTS and the Airport Rail Link within a comfortable walk rather than a hopeful one.
The room is not enormous at 32 sqm, and the gym is small. Neither bothered me for a one-night stay, and the double-opening wardrobe and the C.O. Bigelow amenities suggest a property that has thought about the details.
If you are choosing between the two on price alone, the Grand Mercure is the more sensible booking for a longer stay where you are out all day. If you want somewhere you will actually enjoy being, and particularly if you have lounge access, the Pullman is worth the difference. We would come back, and next time we would stay longer than one night.
