If you want a hotel that is very clean, very friendly, has excellent staff, gives excellent service, a breakfast that suits all and a free hourly transfer to and from Kata beach (5 to 10 minutes level walk away), this is the hotel for you. It is also one of the hotels that organised trips pick you up from for free. (Our current hotel tours charge 2000tbh to pick you up.)
Truthfully, the rooms and reception are a little tired, but within a very short time we saw past that, because everything else was so good.
We've stayed in three hotels this trip, one was a 5*, the Alpina was the best of them all.