How to find Koh Samui's best hotel deals

Book now, stay later? How about pay later? Learn how to find the best deals available on Booking.com – with free cancellation and no pre-payment required – in just four easy clicks. Follow my quick process to find Koh Samui's best hotel rates. It takes under a minute to find rates discounted as much as 40% off.

First, let’s look at Booking.com. I picked a random night next August just for the sake of example. (August is a popular month on Samui so it's not the best time of year to find the steepest discounts, but let's see what we find). Choose a date and click through to your results.

The next page you’ll see your options and this can be overwhelming, especially so if you're unfamiliar with the destination. On Koh Samui you'll start with roughly 1,300 choices.

Ready for the magic? With three more quick clicks, you’ll filter exactly what you want: good deals and the promise of a tropical vacation, with zero commitment.

On the left side of the results page, select the following:

1. Free Cancellation

Click 'Only show properties with free cancellation'.

Using my placeholder date of August 1, this narrowed the selection from 437 available properties on Koh Samui to 337. Still lots to choose from.

2. Health and Safety Measures

Click 'Properties that take health & safety measures'.

User's choice here – maybe you've moved on. However, in Thailand, "properties that take health & safety measures" tends to mean "the majority of our staff is vaccinated". If you've waited this long for a Thai vacation, why not click it with a resounding “YUP”. From 337 properties, the options for my placeholder date were reduced to 262.

If you spot 'SHA', 'SHA Plus' or 'SHA Extra Plus' in the hotel listings – that's just another "we're squeaky clean" certification introduced in 2020. 'SHA' stands for Safety and Health Administration. You might see some variation of 'SHA' in the title or a blue SHA badges overlaid on listing photos, though they're starting to disappear.

3. No prepayment

Click 'No prepayment'

‍An optional third filter, but a nice option indeed. This will depend on your comfort level rolling the dice on the shiny promise of future travel – but as adding this third filter still gives us 83 hotel options, I think it’s a worthwhile inclusion.

4. Optional digging

Look for a crossed-out red number to indicate discounts

Finally, the last step is completely optional – but it's the fun part where you discover the discounts. From 83 hotel options, scroll through your results and look for a red line indicating an available discount. If there's a green badge (Breakfast Included), even better.

Using this method, I found about 40 discounted Koh Samui hotels in under a minute. Discounts ranged from 10% off to 40% off, with an average of 20% off.

Again, none of these options requires pre-payment and all offer free cancellation (often until a day or two before the check-in date – check the terms of the booking page to be sure).

This is a no-commitment way to (A) hopefully save some Future Dollars and (B) promise yourself that there will be a vacation in the future, someway, somehow.

More questions?

If you want a little more introduction to Koh Samui hotels before making your choice, see the following:

• The Koh Samui Guide
• Where to stay on Koh Samui?
• Koh Samui's best family resorts