This is a lovely hotel with outstanding service. Our room (a suite) was spacious and beautifully furnished. We particularly enjoyed the pool after a morning of touring temples. The evening dance performance and dinner was well worth it. The guide books say that this hotel is outside the town, but you should not let that discourage you since it is only a 3-4 minute tuk tuk ride from the center of town. That it is not in the center of town is an advantage since it is a bit quieter and the grounds are lovely.

A few suggestions:
It is really important to have a good guide for touring the temples. It would be overwhelming without a knowledgeable guide and you will learn much more about the incredible sights. We also enjoyed the newly opened museum which is very close to the hotel.

From the various guidebooks it seemed that this hotel was THE place to stay when visiting Angkor and, indeed, it is the closest major hotel to the temples, but I was a little disappointed with my stay.

The hotel is very well maintained although the gardens were much smaller than I had expected. The room I had was absolutely magnificent with separate living and bedrooms, beautiful solid wood floors, a well stocked mini-bar and luxurious bathroom. The fruit bowl was amazing and a very much appreciated welcome gift. The room was spotlessly clean and serviced thoroughly every day (they even topped up the fruit bowl!!)

The hotel has several restaurants but I was rather disappointed by the selection available which was dominated by European cuisine. Being French owned, there is a really fancy French restaurant which was empty every night during my stay. There is a pub style bar serving pizza and a cavernous "coffee shop" style restaurant. This latter seemed geared to tour groups and has a dinner buffet although I ate at about 8pm and a lot of the food had gone and had not been replaced. There was very little Cambodian fare on offer.

The staff were generally very charming but I was surprised by the language difficulties and by the fact that you could stand at reception and be ignored by all the desk staff! The concierge was not helpful and really only wanted to arrange ridiculously overpriced excursions.

The gift shop is very elegant but is horrifically overpriced to the extent of being obscene. I think this reflects the fact that most guests appear to be on organised tours and do not appear to venture out of the hotel other than on excursions. Overall, the hotel seems to cater primarily to people who want to be insulated against the local surroundings.

This is undoubtedly a beautiful hotel with friendly staff but, compared to other high class hotels in Siem Reap, it is very expensive and a little too sanitised for my taste. It's the sort of place where people dress up for dinner and you are charged for almost everything. They apply an outrageous commission when cashing travellers cheques, and even checking e-mails on a very unreliable PC was charged by the minute. I know this is a luxury hotel, and that was part of the attraction, but I just felt that I was being ripped off a bit too much.

Like Cambodia, the hotels also seem to have no middle class. The Sofitel has a wonderful pool, but the value is fair for the money. We also had a TERRIBLE experience booking $100 temple touring through the hotel. We found out the driver only got $4/day. The spa is excellent. The grounds are beautiful. We only ate at the breakfast buffet, which was good. All the local restaurants will deliver, and they're about 1/5 the price of the hotel restaurants. The best room location is actually the superior rooms opening to the pool. I'd probably stay there again for the pool; just realize you're paying too much.

Considering that Siem Reap is a rather small city, there are quite a few large hotels either being built or in existence. Some of these are clearly first-rate hotels. and the Softel Royal Angkor is one of these. The accommodations were excellent with the rooms being of good size and clean. Our room was on the third floor, and we were very happy with what we had. The grounds were beautiful with walkways, a large swimming pool, and a pond on the premises. The service in the hotel was very good and that includes the service at the many restaurants at the Sofitel. Since the town of Siem Reap was not that close, many in our small tour group chose to dine at the hotel. The Italian restaurant and the buffet dining area were good, and the French restaurant was excellent. The Sofitel is probably one of the closest large hotels to Angkor Wat which made the trip to the ruins a short ride. My wife and I were very happy with the Sofitel and would clearly stay there again if the opportunity arose.