The Marari Beach Resort in Kerala is in a superb, if a touch isolated location on a totally unspoiled beach about an hour south of Cochin. The hotel has been deliberately built to be eco friendly, has wonderful facilities and gorgeous self-contained villas with open-air bathrooms. If you can, stay in a pool garden villa as this had a walled patio for the pool and sunbeds with lovely plants and creepers against the walls. This gave the pool villas real privacy that they other villas did not have. There is a separate wooden gate to the compound with a lock. The food was also some of the best we have eaten in an hotel anywhere, although to be fair, we do like Indian food!! One of the outstanding memories was the genuine welcome, attentiveness and kindness of the staff, which is a great credit to a very good management team. Good staff we expect from this quality of hotel, but our experience here was that the staff went the extra mile for us, and there is no doubt that great staff makes a good hotel great If you want to relax in great comfort, then this is the spot, because there is literally nothing around to spoil the peace and quiet. There are no restaurants, or hotels nearby, so I would say it is an ideal honeymoon destination, or a place to relax after a tour of Southern India, but not somewhere to take exhuberant children who want entertainment. The hotel also offer a series of reasonably priced excursions which they appear to run with no minimum numbers. Of course, the main and most popular excursion is a day cruise or an overnight cruise on a houseboat through the rivers and canals of the region. Marari Beach Resort Kerala is highly recommended for stressed executives.