Hotel Review: Hotel Sarova Panafric in Nairobi, Kenya

Stationed in Nairobi for just one night, we chose to stay at Hotel Sarova Panafric and booked the place way in advance in order to get a good rate. We paid 192 US dollars for one night’s stay and breakfast for 2 adults and one child.

The hotel is located just about a 20-minute drive away from the Nairobi airport (Read: How is the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport) and in the morning, we hardly got any traffic.

How is the stay at the Hotel Sarova Panafric in Nairobi?

• Nice clean room with a balcony that looks out into the street. Our room came with the basic amenities such as the coffee/tea provisions, little fridge and the usual toiletries in the bathroom.
• Internet connectivity/Wifi was free for the residents. The helpdesk helps with the login details.
• We found the staff to be extremely helpful. They helped us get a taxi in no time for our tour of the David Sheldrick Elephant Centre, the Giraffe Centre, the Bomas of Kenya show and lunch at the Carnivore Restaurant. We paid 8000 Kenyan Shillings for the 6-hour taxi.
• Their swimming pool looked inviting, but we didn’t have the time for a dip.

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How is the food at the Hotel Sarova Panafric in Nairobi?

The restaurant at the Hotel Sarova Panafric is both outdoors and indoors. We love sitting outside amidst the greens, but chose to eat our meals indoors at the Panafric since it was quite chilly in the evening and morning.

Our lunch at Carnivore had stuffed us for two meals, to the extent that both Jayanta and I wanted to skip dinner. And we did just that. We were reluctant though to put our daughter to bed without dinner, and so, went down to the hotel’s restaurant for a bowl of soup and some dinner rolls. The Mushroom soup was good, and was just perfect for that slightly cold evening. So were the focaccia and wheat rolls. When there, we realized that they have African singing through dinner. Good idea, to sit there with some drinks and enjoy the music.

Hotel Sarova Panifric has a very good spread of breakfast, with a whole section of breads, fruits, yogurts, an awesome spread of some delectable bakery delicacies, a live counter that serves good eggs and pancakes, the African section, meats and every other item. Very good choices and extremely fresh and tasty. We filled ourselves to the brim, since we were headed for the Naivasha town, a 3-hour drive from Nairobi.

Verdict: A tad too expensive. More expensive than the hotels we stayed in Europe. But Hotel Sarova Panifric is good.