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| Holiday-Truth Readers Reports |
Fallon and Jemma from plymouth travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
african safari club
on a singles holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 07 2007 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness |  | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food |  | |
| Entertainment |  |
| said: Well,
Even thought the rooms were very basic you did not stay in them for long, the beds were comfortable and clean and they were cleaned daily, with fresh towels.
The food was average but ok considering the country, they had a variaty of foods, but did tend to be the same every week.
well i would advise to get lots of sleep on the plain as the journey to the hotel is very bumpy and long winded so not advisable if you are tiered..
The hotel staff are are very friendly and talkative and make you feel very welcome.
The entertainment crew were very pleasent and nice to get a long with.
The night entertainment was very basic ant tended to be the same every week, so we went to the near by bar where you were able to have a drink for cheaper and a dance, even though you did get pestered in there you just had to tell the locals No and they would leave you alone.. they were all very chatty and good to have a drink with.
Click here for more information on this hotel, resort and region
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Bob from Brighton travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
ASC
on a family holiday.
There were 2 adults and 1 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 06 2007 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food |  | |
| Entertainment |  |
| said: The Journey was Bumpy and interesting the first time you take it, the second and third time began to grate.
The welcome from the hotel staff was emotional and sincere, and a drink and hot face cloth was most welcome.
The rooms were simple but clean, the air con noisy but very efficient.
The food was very samey with fish or beef steak with various sauces.
In saying that as a fussy eater I survived quite easily.
The location of the hotel is fantastic the bluff is dynamic and you never tire of looking at it.
The beach boys were a pain but were very freindly.
The staff were always ready with a smile [except management who seem to run the place like a military junta] they were attentive, and very well spoken in several languages.
The entertainment was a good effort, well done, must try harder.
The band on fridays went down very well.
The hotel was better than we thought it would be overall I will return!
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Hatti & Bea from North Yorkshire travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
African safari club
on a family holiday.
There were 2 adults and 2 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 02 2005 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: We went (February)in the dry season and the hotel was very quiet which made it more relaxing. The best thing about the hotel was the staff.
We made lots of friends especially the sports lads. we really enjoyed the holiday and are going back in February 2006.
The one thing you must be warned about are the local trades men on the beach(beach boys) they will try to sell their produce for extortionate prices so be prepared to barter!!!!!!! However the beachboys are not allowed onto the hotel premises this will only happen on the beach.
The beach was lovely and the sand is fine and white.
There is a wide variety of sports activities to play on an afternoon including beach vollyball, bowls, bowling, and a morning session of aquagym ETC.
The entertainment ranged from poor magic shows to excellent beach parties, and a gospel choir sang whilst you ate your evening meal.
You had 3 set meals breakfast, lunch and evening meal but at around 4pm each day they sold tea coffee and cakes on the terrace.
The people in the local village are lovely and friendly,you can either get someone from the hotel to take you or you could walk down on your own, I would advise you to take a guide on your first trip.
We also went on a safari, with african safari club excellent!!! We would recommend Kimana game lodge, were you will be well looked after by the locals.
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julie dyche from bristol travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
asc
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 12 2004 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food |  | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: The hotel looked lovely on arrival, the thatched bungalows on the beach front are very pretty, but once inside are very basic and in need of a major make-over, the rooms had air conditioning but you could'nt keep it on at night as it sounded like an army of tanks going through the room, the rooms were cleaned every day and clean towels and bedding several times a week.
The food in the hotel was very bland, tasteless and repetitive, what you did'nt eat for dinner one night you got for lunch the next day with sauce added to it. The food was either luke warm or cold.
The local boys who work at the hotel were mostly friendly and helpful, but the holiday reps were unfriendly abrupt and unapproachable, entertainment saw the same dancers 3 times in a fortnight, a snake show, acrobats not my ideal of holiday entertainment, even new years eve the entertainment was gone by 10pm.
You were in a bay which was lovely but the tide was out most of the time so you could'nt swim, you had to go to the pool for dip. I would'nt recommend this holiday to any body, a definite no no if you have kids.
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Pablo from newbury travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
african safari club
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 10 2004 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: Most of the rooms havent got air conditioning if you request for it the answer is`simply: this is africa
Food: always same choices, no variety 14 days of having same food every single day and night.
Drinks: very expensive specially water
#Safaris: you will be put in a bus acrossing Tsavo west only stoping for lunch (pack lunch: dry burger carton of juice, warm, and a lime) bus without air conditioning and in most cases wouldnt pass the mot in England.
The lodges created in the 70's hadnt change since, food again same thing. If you visit Kimara, very beatifull but no cats, no rhinos and you do same route 5 or 6 times a day
Hotel services and administration staff, cant do anything at all everything has to do with head office.
We did make formal complaints with letters from the hotel manager sugesting a full refund this was done near to a year a go we call about 5 or 6 times to the head office had no reply at all.
It was a very expensive holiday and it was the worst holiday I have ever been on.
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Bee-Ann Lim from Bracknell travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
African Safari Club
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 10 2004 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: We have just returned from a fabulous holiday at Watamu Beach Hotel with African Safari Club. Before going out there we had heard very mixed reviews about it so had a few reservations but could not find any real fault with the hotel or the company. Put simply, if you are the sort of person who likes to complain, you will find plenty to complain about, but if you are just out for a nice relaxing holiday and are happy to remember that you are in a third world country then you will be fine.
Make sure that you take £30 per person in sterling for the visa. Or dollars (could be cheaper dependent on the exchange rate). You do have to queue for ages at Mombassa airport - both going in and coming out! Also, the ‘porters’ at the airport taking your bags to the hotel are after horrendous tips! It’s probably best to have about £1 or so in cash and pretend you don’t have anything extra – lots of people got quite stung by that!
The hotel is about 2 hours transfer from the hotel but the buses are extremely old and the roads very bumpy so it feels MUCH longer. It can also be longer if you have to stop at other hotels along the way, or get dropped off for about 10 minutes whilst they fill petrol. It is worth the journey when you get to the hotel and see the view and the sea!
The hotel itself is nice, but the rooms are quite old and very basic. Although this is a bit disappointing initially, after you’ve unpacked and realise you are never in your room and awake it is fine! Plus there’s a bit tent (aka mosquito net) to keep you amused! The sea looks nice, but there is a lot of seaweed in it (seasonal) and that spoils the view a bit at low tide. Luckily we were more pool people so that didn't matter too much!
Food is good, although it can get a bit predictable after a few days. Breakfast and lunch are both buffets. Dinner is a pasta and/or soup which you get yourself, then a choice of a meat or fish main course, and then buffet dessert. You are sat at the same table for your whole stay and could get put with ‘dinner partners’ so be prepared for that. We ate at the a la carte restaurant once which was a very romantic night, despite the bugs climbing all over the table and chairs! The food there was very tasty and made a nice change. We also ate out at the Ascot Italian restaurant next to the hotel one night – Wine, water, two ham and melon starters, a LARGE steak and chips and a pizza came to about £20 – with the wine being the most expensive thing. The pizza was quite oily though and a few people (including my boyfriend) got stomach upsets due to that….
There is evening entertainment every night after dinner and is generally something local e.g. a choir, a karate show, Masaii dancers. Some were not so good, but some (the snake show and Acrobatic show especially) were very good. There are activities organised each day by the animation team – aqua aerobics and volleyball seemed to be the most popular. There is also a bush tour, and a village tour twice a week. Both are well worth it – you go out with a guide but that still does not protect you from the ‘beach boys’ wanting to talk to you (for money of course!) and sell you things. The best tactic apparently is to ignore, but that is really not in most people’s nature and so we didn’t go out that much due to it. We did find on the bush tour that because we only spoke to one guy and ignored the rest, they seemed to go away – hence only one tip necessary at the end!
The safari was absolutely fantastic. We did the Kilamanjaro Camp Safari for three nights. Flew to Crocodile Camp late afternoon, followed by one game drive in Tsavo East. The crocodiles are fed after dinner which is quite a scary thing to see! The next day we had a game drive, and saw a lot of animals but none of the big cats. That evening we flew to Kimana which was a much more open park with the animals much easier to spot. Kimana has a much slower pace to it, and the guides are happy to just sit and observe the animals (which tend to live in large herds) with you. The Leopard Lodge was beautiful with game freely roaming round the grounds, and the manager there was brilliant. Food throughout was five course sit down lunches and dinners – and was absolutely delicious. The staff are extremely friendly and can’t do enough to help. Wake up calls were at 5.30am but we found that we didn’t really notice it, and slept quite early to compensate. It was well worth doing two camps – you got to see two very different parks, and it was a bit more relaxed than a one night dash which people found very tiring. The two hour drive back from the air strip late at night was probably the most tiring thing! Take a fleece and some long trousers for the early morning game drives, and pack your clothes in a plastic bag within your bag so that they don’t get too dusty! Don’t be surprised if you don’t manage to get hot water, especially at the Crocodile Camp.
Money: The hotel is cashless so you sign for everything (in Euros) and then settle your bill at the end (or during your stay if you want) by card or any currency you want e.g. leftover shillings. To give you an indication of costs – the pool and beach lounger mattresses are 1.50 euros per day, a soft drink is about 0.90 euros. You can get 5 litres of water for 2 euros. Our meal at the a la carte restaurant came to about 40 euros for two of us (no wine). Take money for tipping – we tipped about 1000 shillings a day for our safari drivers (quite a lot but we thought they had earnt it!), and then about 200 for waiters at the lodges. For the room boy we left about $5 and our waiter at Watamu got about 500 shillings.
In terms of taking things out for the Kenyans etc. Clothes you might want to wear out there and then discard might be quite good to give away to hotel staff e.g. the room boys. We took pens but found that we didn’t want to give it to the children ‘begging’ in the street and the school seemed to get quite lot of them – although I guess they can always use more! Exercise books may be more in demand.
Just a word about excess baggage charges. They don’t really charge you on the way out but several people are convinced that the scales on the way home are a bit dodgy – and at 7 euros for every extra kilo it can get very costly! So, make sure you are WELL under the limit and don’t buy too much wooden stuff! They do have quite good shops at the airport so you can always get heavy wooden animals etc there – after you’re checked through.
In summary, it was a fantastic holiday and I can’t wait to go to Kenya again to try to see the Big Cats!! We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend ASC and Watamu. Having said that, if you have not booked your holiday yet – it may be worth looking at some of the ones closer to Mombassa to save the bone rattling drive (and it will give you more choice of excursions), although some people have said that the staff aren’t as friendly.
My Top Tips:
1) Take an umbrella and a mac for those occasions when it rains – especially on safari when you’re at the mercy of the elements!
2) Make sure that you take enough a lot of small change for tips (e.g. 100 or 200 shilling notes) as it is very hard to get change out there. We took dollars for tipping but found that a lot of people actually prefer shillings (especially on safari).
3) Take a pair of ear plugs – the hotel is right next to a mosque and the singing man calling everybody to prayer wakes you up constantly in the early hours of the morning!
4) Remember that you are in a third world country, and on holiday – everything doesn’t need to be run with military precision – Hakuna Matata!
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lynn from manchester travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
asc
on a family holiday.
There were 3 adults and 1 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 06 2004 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: Due to our request that we would not like to stay in the Malaika on Shanzu [because of bad reports] spent approximately 3hrs in Watumu hotel, then demanded to be transferred to Sea horse, as it wouldn’t matter how bad it was there, we could at least, go into Kilifi town, where we knew our way around.
Watumu Hotel was the complete "pits" what the heck are people allowing themselves to stay in?
Food, well the lunchtime meal offered "tongue" yes it was tongue and it had hairs on it, and I have the photos to prove it ugh!! We had to pay for the cup of tea and coffee that was served in the afternoon, in a 4 star hotel!
Location, not bad, if you want to see completely nothing, no ocean just the back of the accommodation in front of you, which is not a pretty sight... and grubby.
The rooms were small, basically dingy, and gloomy, in great need of decorating and not at all clean.
Staff, well, the staff that have no power, whatsoever are possibly ok, anything above waiter or room person, are very bad representatives of a fantastic country.
Hotel reps, one was there, when we arrived, he was a waste of valuable space, he did a complete runner when there was the first signs of any trouble.
Entertainment, well, it was extremely entertaining trying to get out as fast as we could.
Would I visit this hotel again... only if an enemy wanted to seek his revenge on me.
Complainer..that,I am not, I say this tongue[ugh!]in cheek, although I did have to spend at least one and a half hours behind the rest of the clients for help to "get out”. Whilst a large crowd of tourists, who had complained to be moved from their hotel the Malaika, [who deviously changed their name to the Vasco de Gamma] were arriving "in hoards" from that hotel to the Watumu hotel.
And were asked to pay £400 extra for the upgrade...an upgrade for what I ask myself. ASC.
Seahorse wasn’t much better. We left and went to the Kilifi Bay Beach hotel.
Entertainment, as seems usual in Kenya is much the same; I appreciate all the entertainment, which is much repeated at all the hotels along the coast.
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Paul from Sheffield travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
African safari club
on a couples holiday.
There were 2 adults and 0 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 05 2004 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: Hotel was nice, beach view was stunning, quite alot of seaweed though.
Rooms were basic but fine.
Food was ok but a little bland, no fear of putting too much weight on. Drinks were priced ok and were free at meal times.
Staff were very friendly. When we tipped our waiter early on the change in him was amazing, we couldn't drink fast enough at meal times.
Entertainment was ok but I have seen better in Kenya. Beach volleyball each afternoon was a must.
Nice holiday and good value for money at around £500 for 13 nights full board, wouldn't want to pay any more than that.
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susan hartley from dewsbury travelled to Club Hotel Watamu Beach with
AFC
on a family holiday.
There were 3 adults and 1 child(ren) in the party. The travel date was 05 2003 | rated the Club Hotel Watamu Beach as follows:| Cleanliness | | | Location | | | Staff | | | Food | | |
| Entertainment | |
| said: Hi,
As I have reported on the chat forums about Kenya the hotel club watamu beach is supposed to be four stars but the only four star rating I would give it would be for the scenic beach location.
The hotel itself needs overhauling. As before the rooms in the lower grounds are like army barracks. The sockets are dangerously placed in most of the rooms with the only socket being over the sink in the bathroom. Highly dangerous. My extension socket consisted of three bare wires twisted around each other with a socket on one end and a plug on the other.
The rooms need a good lick of paint and the air-conditioning units need a modern replacement as nearly everyone’s for the month we were there blew up. May and November are the worst months for the seaweed which are brought in by the long and the short rains.
The hotel rep Elizabeth we had was worse than useless. We were there when the last terrorist threat was on and instead of keeping everyone up to date as she had promised to do she posted an old report from the hotel bombing the previous November, as if anyone needed reminding of that incident when we were in the middle of another.
We had rats running around the dining room into the kitchen area.
The free safari you get is brilliant. Of all the safaris we have been on it was one of the best. We saw everything. The lodges they have at crocodile safari camp are wonderful. Better than the five star Serena amboseli lodge. We asked if we could stay on there instead of going back to the hotel and if the rooms are available they will let you swap hotel for camp nights.
Don`t be afraid to leave the hotel and explore watamu village for yourselves. Just tell the beach boys who wait at the gate hapana (no) and they will leave you alone. It does you no harm to befriend your houseboy, or waiter or taxi driver as more often than not they will be proud to show you where they live and give you the best advice for where to go and what to see often better and cheaper than the hotels guided tours.
Sue.
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