Independent editorial coverage of SHA-certified hotels in Thailand. Founded 2026.
What SHA Thailand is
SHA Thailand is an independent editorial publication that reviews hotels carrying current SHA, SHA Plus, or SHA Extra Plus certification from the Tourism Authority of Thailand. We cover about 50 hotels across Bangkok, Phuket, Chiang Mai, Koh Samui, Pattaya, Krabi, and Hua Hin, with new properties added when our writers can verify them in person or through 50+ recent reviews on Agoda and Tripadvisor.
We exist because the public SHA registry tells you which hotels passed an inspection but not which ones are actually worth booking. Our job is to bridge that gap. Our process is documented in detail on the how we review page.
The benchmark we hold ourselves to
Two questions guide every published article on this site:
- Did we tell the reader something they could not find in the hotel’s own marketing copy?
- Did we surface at least two concrete limitations of the property so the reader can decide whether to skip it?
If the answer to either is no, the article does not ship. We do not run paid placement. We do not accept hotel comps in exchange for coverage. The full editorial independence policy is on the affiliate disclosure page.
The writers
Six contributors, each with one declared content lane. Mixing lanes is an editorial fail; a draft must read as one voice from start to end. The names and photos are real. The bios below are the standing references we use internally.
Mint Wongsakul
Food guides · design hotels
Bangkok-based food and design-hotel writer. Eight years in Thai food media before joining SHA Thailand in March 2026. Mint covers restaurant roundups and the hotels where the kitchen is the reason to book. Reads room-service menus the way some people read novels.
Ploy Pichaisri
Destination guides · culture
Based in Rawai on the south coast of Phuket. Six years guiding small-group trips around the Andaman before turning to writing. Ploy covers destination guides, neighborhood essays, and the cultural context most travel articles skip. Verifies entry fees and season conditions for the publish month, plus rip-current and reef-shoe warnings on every beach mentioned.
Nam Charoenrak
Itineraries · multi-stop trips
Builds itineraries. Nam handles three-day and seven-day trip guides plus the comparison tables that anchor every city roundup on the site. Built logistics for tour operators before writing about them. Tells you when to book the transfer yourself instead of trusting the hotel’s complimentary airport pickup.
Fern Saetang
Hotel reviews · roundups
Lead hotel reviewer. Twelve years of hotel-industry reporting across Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Fern owns the city-specific SHA roundups and the long-form individual hotel reviews. Has personally stayed at 31 of the 52 hotels we currently cover, and reads the recent reviews on Agoda and Tripadvisor for the rest.
Karn Boonyasit
Transport · ferries · day trips
Transport writer. Karn covers ferries, buses, overnight trains, and the inter-island logistics that fill most Thailand itineraries. Has personally traveled every ferry route the site covers. Watches 12go’s schedule feed and catches operator timetable changes the day they happen.
Lek Suriyawong
Nightlife · family resorts · muay thai
Covers nightlife, muay thai, and family resorts. Lek tests venues across full 8-hour sessions, the way a guest actually uses them. First to spot when a kids’ club is theater rather than actually staffed, and when a rooftop bar’s no-cover policy hides the cover in the drink minimum.
How the writers work together
Each article is owned by one writer. The writer picks the topic from the editorial pipeline, runs the eight-step review process documented on the how we review page, drafts, and submits. Editorial leads gate against the publication checklist before deploy. The Mode A / Mode B disclosure rule is enforced at gate. Mixed-mode articles are sent back for separation.
We do not assign articles to writers based on which one will produce the highest CTR. We assign based on lane. Mint does not write transport guides. Karn does not write hotel reviews. This is the editorial rule that protects voice from drifting toward whatever Google rewards in a given quarter.
How we make money
Affiliate commission, paid by the booking platform when a reader books through one of our links. The primary partner is Agoda; smaller partners include Tripadvisor (for activities and dining cross-references), 12go.asia (transport), GetYourGuide (tours), EKTA Traveling (insurance), Trip.com (flights), and QEEQ (car rental). The Booking.com partnership ended May 31, 2026. No Booking.com link appears on any current or future SHA Thailand page.
Three rules govern the business model:
- No paid placement. Hotels cannot pay to appear in our coverage. We have refused 11 such offers between February and June 2026 and we publish the count quarterly.
- No commission-weighted editorial. The order of hotels in a roundup is determined by editorial judgment, not by which property pays the highest commission. A Plus hotel never appears above a better Extra Plus hotel just because the commission is higher.
- No removal of limitations under pressure. Once a limitation is published, it stays. Factual-error corrections are welcomed; opinion is not a factual error.
Where we are and how to reach us
The editorial team is distributed across Bangkok, Phuket, and Chiang Mai. Editorial inquiries, factual corrections, and pitches go to the email address on the contact page. We answer most messages within 48 hours. For urgent corrections to a published article (a hotel has closed, a rate has changed by more than 30 percent, an entry fee has changed), put “URGENT” in the subject line and we will turn it around the same day.
What you will not find here
For clarity:
- No general “Thailand travel” content. We cover hotels, food, transport, and the activities people do around the hotels they stay at. We do not write visa guides, currency primers, or “is Thailand safe” pieces.
- No hotel listings without SHA certification. The site is bounded by the SHA registry. If a property does not hold a current certificate, we do not cover it.
- No personality content. The writers have voices but the site is not about them. The bios above are the only personal content on the site.
- No banned-word filler. We have an internal banned-word list that removes “stunning”, “hidden gem”, “world-class”, “ultimate”, and 18 other words on the publication checklist. They add no information.
Verification and trust signals
We display the Tourism Authority of Thailand SHA certification status for every hotel we cover. We cross-check guest sentiment against Tripadvisor on every property. Our live rates come from the Agoda partner API and refresh every six hours. The full source list is in the how we review page.
This site has been operational since February 2026 and has published 22 articles as of June 2026. Article-level read counts and average dwell time are reviewed monthly. Articles that the data shows are no longer useful (closed hotels, retired ferry routes, deprecated pricing) are updated within 14 days of detection or pulled.