Swahili Beach Resort

Yes — that restaurant point is important because it’s not just that the restaurants were booked; your concern is that the reservation system appeared to push guests toward the buffet despite empty tables in the à la carte restaurants. Here’s the revised version with that made much clearer while still keeping it Google-review length: We spent 7 nights at Swahili Beach Resort in an Executive Suite, and unfortunately, for us it deserves 3 stars at most. POSITIVES: The staff are genuinely friendly and helpful. Special shoutout to Abdallah from housekeeping, who did an impeccable job every single day. Rooms were cleaned twice daily, which was a lovely touch. The buffet food was generally good, especially the Indian and Swahili options. Farida, Kudura, Valentine and Masha at the omelette station were amazing. The massages were also excellent — Julliet gave me the most relaxing massage of the trip! KIDS CLUB: This was one of the biggest disappointments. There is effectively NO kids club. There’s a screen advertising daily activities, but when you ask where they take place, there is simply one lovely lady, Alicia, sitting by the pool with no proper room, tables, chairs or facilities for children. We specifically chose this hotel because of the advertised kids club and felt completely misled. BEACH: During our stay, the beach was covered in huge amounts of seagrass, including in the water, so we couldn’t enjoy it. We were told it was seasonal. Even without the seagrass, there are many rocks directly in front of the hotel, so you need to walk further down the beach for the classic Diani experience. The beach and pool loungers, including the cabanas, were also extremely dirty. RESTAURANTS: There are 4 restaurants. The buffet had good food but limited continental choices. Barharini had a much better continental selection and everything we tried was good, although items like crab and prawns were conveniently “out of stock” or charged at full price. The Indian restaurant was very good, but the Zanz-i-Bar teppanyaki experience was disappointing — more of a brief fire show over already-prepared food, and not worth the price. The most frustrating part was the reservation system. Both à la carte restaurants were constantly “fully booked,” yet when we walked past or actually went inside, there were MANY empty tables. It honestly felt like tables were being blocked to discourage guests on half/full board from eating at the à la carte restaurants and instead push them toward the buffet, while the better/more expensive food remained unavailable. This was extremely frustrating and made the dining experience feel unnecessarily restricted. ROOMS & NOISE: This was by far the biggest problem. The doors and windows are not soundproof or properly sealed, and the walls are extremely thin. We could hear music, TVs, pool noise and even people moving things upstairs late at night. Mosquitoes also easily entered through the gaps. Our children couldn’t nap during our entire stay. We complained several times, but management only apologized and offered no solution or room change. For a hotel marketed as 5-star, the lack of sleep and the management’s response were extremely disappointing. We paid a lot of money and simply couldn’t enjoy our room. Overall, the resort has friendly staff, good food and an excellent spa, but the nonexistent kids club, beach conditions, cleanliness, restaurant restrictions and especially the noise are not what we expected from a 5-star hotel. We would not return. At half the price, perhaps it would be worth considering, but at the price we paid, it was not worth it. We would stay elsewhere and simply visit the spa.

Definitely would not recommend the staff members were very bad we eat at the buffet and we went to the next hotel to it the staff's followed as to the next hottel and announced that we had already eaten to the whole hotel ,also the rooms smelled very badly it was as if there was a used diaper in the room they didn't even bother to change the bed sheets and blankets even though we had told the earlier the only good thing was the pools and also none of the food's were fully cooked especially the pancakes this is the worst hotel I am not coming here again definitely not worth the money

We saw reviews and thought this hotel was nice but first the food was not nice and cared only about the whte people and cooked food that was not fully cooked but I think the ppl who clean the rooms should be promoted they have excellent work and some workers in the buffet were very rude and not nice I defenetly would not recommend coming here again

We spent 4 nights at the Swahili Beach resort following an 8 day safari across Kenya. We were attracted to Diani because of the reports of beautiful pristine beaches. The hotel is situated close to the local airport with free courtesy taxis provided for transfers. On arrival to the hotel we were greeted by the checking in staff and given a drink. I'm unsure why but the whole process of checking in took 40 minutes. The staff were friendly and welcoming. We had booked two rooms, a double and a twin. The rooms were sizeable with a standard layout but seemed dated with dusty soft furnishings. We had two evening meals at the buffet restaurant which were disappointing. The food choices were limited with a lot of repetition over the two nights. The general feel was of trying to minimise costs and to maximise profit. That said, the food at the three A la carte restaurants (Indian, Tepanyaki and Barharini) was very good as was the service there. My biggest disappointment was the beach. This is the only beach resort I have been to that does not have a functioning beach. On our first walk down to the beach it became apparent that the whole beach was completely covered with seaweed with little sand in sight!! Furthermore, the area just beyond what should be sand, was followed by an extensive area of rocks making any sort of access to the sea impossible!!! So disappointing and not what we had imagined. The stay was largely spent by the pools which were well maintained, as were the gardens. There are some shops and store nearby restaurants to venture out to as well. The spa and gym were nice. Other gripes, the battery for the safe in one of the rooms wasn't working and we had to ask for a replacement key card for one of the rooms on five separate occasions as it stopped working within a few hours. Our request for an extra bottle of drinking water for the room was met with a curt 'no'!!! Overall, a beautiful hotel with a lot of potential but lacking attention to detail. It has good A la carte restaurants but a poor buffet restaurant and if you are looking for a beach where you can walk along the shore and have a dip in the sea then not a great destination.

The resort is is lovely. View is just fantastic. A young man Stephen who checked me in was great he explained me all the information of the hotel. The room was very big. The only downfall was that they need more staff in the restaurant besides that everything was great.