The hotel grounds and the rooms were beautiful. Th...

The hotel grounds and the rooms were beautiful. The staff were friendly and accommodating. They even delivered cake to our room for mine and my wife's anniversary. I'm giving three stars because although the staff and aesthetics were great, I was thoroughly disappointed in other aspects. The food at the resort was hit or miss and I even suffered a boit of food poisoning. I thought sticking to food at the resort would keep me from getting sick, but i was wrong. I also wrongly assumed that tours through the Hilton's trip desk would avoid some of the negative aspects of tourism in Thailand that i read about online. My wife and I took a city tour of Phuket, which was going very well until we came to the "Elephant Trekking" portion of the tour. I had read about various animal abuses that happen in Phuket as part of the tourism, but I figured that Hilton would not associate with that kind of activity so booking an elephant experience with them would be pretty safe. I was very wrong. We arrived at Phuket Safari Eco+ to see a young elephant chained to the ground, unable to move more than a few feet, monkeys in chains in small bird cages, and adults elephants being forced to walk in monotonous circles through a mix of mud and their own feces and prodded with sharp tools when they refused to continue walking. Horrendous conditions to say the least. Ruined the entire stay for me. I had hoped a name like Hilton would be above associating with such blatant animal abuse in the name of a quick buck, but again, I was wrong. Extremely dissapointed. I advise anyone to avoid the city tours (especially the ones with elephants and/or monkeys) and you will likely enjoy your stay.