I am inclined to agree almost literally with the three reviews from January 2010. While I'd rather not speculate whether the managers are "money-grabbers" or not, at least I have made very similar observations as the reviewers.
The hotel is indeed nicely situated and has good amenities, reasonably priced laundry, meals, scooters etc.
The staff may be helpful and even considerate, but the hotel as a whole suffers from insufficient or inadequate management. The younger employees seem to lack prior hotel experience (as in cleaning and replenishing rooms) but get little or no guidance from the managers, who apparently focus on selling excursions and other third-party services.
The worst day of my stay was when one of these third parties rang up the manager, incorrectly accused us of having missed a pickup time and required an extra fee. While I immediately replied this was a mistake, the manager would only believe in the other person's version until I had gone through the trouble to prove her wrong. In my opinion, this not only demonstrates a complete lack of professionalism but is incredibly rude.
Fortunately (in some sense), I was not able to move to another hotel without losing a large prepaid sum, so I stayed and in the subsequent days I realised that not all people at Darawadee have the same temper. Despite this, I would only recommend people with strong nerves to stay here - at least with the present management.
