Where to Stay on Southern Long Beach — The Belt Where the Day Ends Inside the Gate

The airport is close and both ends of the island are not

Straight-line airport distances cluster tightly: 4.5km (Novotel), 5.1km (Pullman), 5.9km (InterContinental), all listed at roughly 10 to 15 minutes. On arrival and departure day, all three save you the same amount of time.

Short distance does not guarantee short time. Road works run along the island’s southern axis, so published transfer times can drift. Leave slack on a tight schedule.

Everything else is far. Duong Dong Market sits around 10km away, and the Hon Thom cable car is 9.8km (InterContinental), 10.6km (Pullman), 11.6km (Novotel). The further south you go, the closer the cable car and the further the airport — inside this belt, those two numbers move in opposite directions.

Only one of the three has anything outside the gate

Treating the whole belt as “no walkable street life” would be wrong, and reviews make the difference clear.

• Novotel — reviews repeatedly describe the Sonasea night market directly opposite the gate, with massage shops, restaurants and a supermarket branch within walking distance. They also note it is smaller than the market in town.
• Pullman — reviews specifically note there is no convenience store nearby, and describe a free shuttle to a supermarket instead.
• InterContinental — built on the assumption that the day happens on the property.

Agoda’s location scores track that difference. Novotel rates 8.9 for location against 8.7 overall, while Pullman rates 8.6 against 8.8 overall. InterContinental sits at 9.0 on both.

What actually separates the three

Location barely separates them. Build year, child occupancy age band and largest room do.

• If your children are teenagers — Novotel Phu Quoc Resort offers free child occupancy from age 1 to 15, the widest band of the three, which changes the total noticeably once children pass primary school. It opened in 2016 with 366 rooms and two pools.
• If you want the newest building — Pullman Phu Quoc Beach Resort opened in 2020. Service scores 9.31 against 8.8 overall, and reviews repeatedly describe soft sand on the private beach. Free child occupancy runs 3 to 12.
• If you need three bedrooms — InterContinental Phu Quoc Long Beach has a three-bedroom ocean-view residence with two kings and two singles. It opened in 2018 with 459 rooms, the largest of the three, and sits closest to the cable car at 9.8km. Free child occupancy runs 4 to 11.

What to weigh before booking any of them

Dinner becomes part of the total. With nothing walkable outside, meals default to the property, and across three or more nights that is a real line item. All three record an average stay of around three nights. Novotel’s market at the gate is the one thing that softens this.

Check soundproofing. Reviews describe Novotel’s Deluxe Twin as a connecting villa layout where the neighbouring room was audible, and Pullman’s terraces as running into each other.

Breakfast opinion splits hardest at Novotel, where reviews range from excellent variety to actively off-putting. Pullman’s breakfast reviews run consistently positive.

How this list is built

• Verified distances to the airport, the Hon Thom cable car and Duong Dong Market — inside this belt they move against each other
• Whether anything walkable exists outside the gate
• Build and renovation years, and free child occupancy age bands
• Realistic room layouts for three or more people sharing

Distances come from Agoda property data, with the verification date on each hotel page. These are research-based write-ups, not stays.

How the five areas differ on airport distance, walkability and beach orientation is set out in Where to Stay in Phu Quoc.