Usually I don't like to write negative comments, but in this case I think it's necessary to give my honest opinion. Please note that I am NOT a picky traveller, I am a backpacker and have seen many hotels in Kenya, and this one was my least favorite of all.
Let me start by saying that indeed, the location is great, the rooms are spacious and have just great balconies, and that the breakfast is really good, so no complaints about that.
What bothered me the most was the (lack of) staff. The people with whom I was arranging our stay, I have never even met.
When I sent the money through my phone to the manager, after a while I received it back. When I called the guy to ask what went wrong he said: 'Oh sorry, I was too busy this week to accept the money.' How can you be too busy to accept money from your clients?
And when we arrived, the manager was not there, so instead there was another guy, one of the most annoying people I've met during my 5 month stay. During the day and the night he invited his friends over to hang around at the hotel and just sit there.
Also, he asked my divorced mother where the father was, and why he was not travelling with us. That's none of your business!
He also asked me if he could marry me. I see that he meant this just as a joke, but you just don't say such things to clients.
And then he just hung around us, took a chair, and didn't seem to notice that we preferred to be by ourselves.
I could go on for hours about this guy, but I think I have made my point clear.
This was my main point of critique. Besides there were some smaller things, like:
- the fan really made so much noise that you couldn't go to sleep, and nobody came to fix it
- when we asked for toiletpaper in the morning, the guy promised it would be there in the evening, but it wasn't, because he was probably too busy hanging around with his friends.
- the Yu-Gi-Oh pillowcase gave me the impression that the owner uses her children's old bed linen and towels (which smelled really bad by the way) for the hotel
- there were white (!) stains in on my bed linen
- there is no drinking water available at the hotel, not even for sale. I've seen cheap backpacker's hostels where cold drinking water is offered for free.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll never return (in fact we left earlier than planned), but I realize it's the cheapest you're gonna find in Watamu, and if you're on a budget there might be not many other options.