I'm on my first ‘hotel’ vacation in Africa in Mombasa, Kenya. I live here now and I’ve been to a number of places, but not as a vacation in a hotel. I knew ahead of time I needed to set aside my expectations, coming from a country (America) who’s hotels are quite large and luxurious as compared to the rest of the world.

It just so happens, we are staying in the nicest suite this resort has. I have family in town, so it made sense to get the large suite instead of a few rooms.

By default, they sign you up for half-board. I immediately upgraded to full-board, at first not aware there was again another step up to all-inclusive. The staff here don’t know much about their own services and it’s hard to know much about the resort when everyone you ask doesn’t know either. I think the most knowledgeable people are those visiting.

On to the meat of the post: When All-Inclusive Doesn’t Include Much

So we got the all-inclusive package and we’re staying in their only presidential suite. There is one main dining hall, a snack bar and 3 reservation only restaurants. As usual, the all-inclusive bars stock the cheapest liquors known to man and I’m not sure that the sodas are the actual labels and likely something locally made and much cheaper for the resort. There is one cash bar and the prices are about what they’d be in the states, nothing special. I asked this ‘cash bar’ for a list of their frozen drinks. He acted like he knew what I was talking about, but clearly had no idea. He told me he could make anything. I assured him that making  the frozen drinks I wanted was not something he could do nor had he ever made a similar drink. It turns out they in fact did not have anything like that.

I visited the front desk our first morning to set a reservation for dinner at one of the three restaurants. Upon making the reservation, I was informed we had to pay a fee to use those restaurants. This was disappointing. While discussing with the fam, a manager came out and decided we would be comped. I’m not sure what they decided that, but it was nice.

So far not included in ‘all-inclusive’... Frozen drinks, dinner, water (however we found out that we were given bottled water in our room though I doubt this is true for all rooms)... More to come as I continue my stay...

It’s certainly possible my final review will be glowing, but no so right now. I’ll include the resort name at that time.

Next post... When a family friendly resort isn’t so friendly for families....