Casa Idaman Motel Langkawi

The motel was cozy and clean, and it was comfortable staying there. The furniture is a little old, but for the price it offers good value. Some rooms have occasional leaks, and the internet is quite weak. That makes it a decent place to relax and take an internet break.

We never got to find out whether the place itself was good value, though we'd have liked to stay. I've spent four months in various Cenang places, and hotels and guesthouses there are generally relaxed and often good value, probably including this one. But this place wins the crown for incompetence among the Langkawi places I've dealt with. Two days ago, we booked through the official site link on Google Maps, using a German booking provider for small properties that's been around for 25 years. We had a confirmation and booking number. When we arrived to check in, they had no booking in their system. We checked everything on our end and showed them the confirmation email. The receptionist was trying to figure it out, but the check-in computer was painfully slow, with pages taking around 30 seconds to open. Their WiFi seemed no better. After 15 minutes, I got her to look in their Gmail spam folder, and there was our booking email from two days earlier. The hotel was full. They had ended their relationship with that booking engine some time ago, but apparently had simply routed its bookings, real bookings like ours, to spam without telling potential guests. We gave them nearly three hours in the check-in area while the friendly but utterly incompetent manager tried and failed to find us a comparable room. It was January 1, so not easy, but surely easier for a local manager than for stranded tourists. We only wanted a comparable place with them covering the difference between our two-day booking and the last-minute rate. After all that waiting, we booked somewhere else ourselves and left. It's sad, because we would have liked to stay.

The rooms are spacious and clean, with working air conditioning and a refrigerator, and daily housekeeping plus complimentary water bottles are provided. There's a kid-friendly pool, and the beach is within walking distance. There is no elevator, so getting luggage to higher floors can be difficult, especially with limited staff help. Bring your own soap and shampoo, as no toiletries are supplied. The shower area is small and may not suit everyone. The TV doesn't work, and there's no WiFi in the rooms.

I'm a regular visitor to Langkawi, and this was my first attempt to stay here. I'm glad I'd skipped it all these years. They stressed me out on NEW YEAR'S DAY 2026. I reserved three nights, from 1-4 Jan, two days beforehand through the official site shown on Google Maps. I received a confirmation saying payment would be at the property, and the hotel's email address was copied. At check-in on 01 Jan, the receptionist said there was no booking under my name and asked where I'd booked. I explained, but they said they only take reservations through Agoda or Booking.com, even though Google showed an official site. The manager later said they no longer worked with that booking site. Their solution was to send bookings from it to the spam folder, with no communication to potential guests, leaving them to discover the problem on arrival. They had actually received my reservation email, but it was in spam. They didn't acknowledge it or take responsibility. I'm no hospitality management expert, but if tourists turned up stranded on New Year's Day because my hotel failed to monitor bookings properly, I'd at least try to help them find a place of similar quality in the same area. I had to suggest that. The manager said they tried, but offered only options farther from the beach or more expensive than my rate, with no plan to cover the difference until I suggested it. They seemed to think it wasn't their fault, despite having confirmed the booking and eventually finding it in spam. We waited almost three hours for help and got nowhere.