Blue Marlin Sporting Resort — Hotel in Sabaki ward

We stayed at the Blue Marlin (as it was then) in September 1997 and enjoyed every minute, but it closed the following year and has only just reopened under Italian ownership. The hotel as we knew it had superb seaview rooms, two pools, an open air dining area, and it it is right on the beach.||We went there because of the Hemingway connection (he stayed at the Blue Marlin exclusively - but that hotel has been replaced by the new one).||||The beach is superb, but expect to be approached throughout the day by people trying to make a living selling every kind of trinket, and at night, get used to the fact that the hotel security staff will follow you onto the beach and stay at a discreet distance for your safety.||This review, rather than focus on the hotel itself is just a little advice about Malindi and it's environs that we think might might help.||Firstly, wherever you stay in Malindi, you will be approached by locals who speak perfect English, offering their services as a guide.||On day one, we waved them away and walked into town, to be pestered every two minutes by the same offer from different people. ||This got to be so wearing that, the next day, we decided to choose a guide that looked and sounded ok, and have a chat.||The bottom line in Malindi is that a real guide will not charge you money - they earn that from the traders they take you to...e.g. we wanted some carvings, and Ahmed took us across town to the local tradesmens market and did all the intermediary translating for us, (he even asked us what we wished to pay and then haggled for a good price).||Batik? He took us around some very nice shops and waited patiently outside for us to finish our business.||This happened on each day we went outside the hotel - we would arrange to meet Ahmed if we wanted to go shopping, and if we were just sightseeing we went about unmolested ('we are with Ahmed" always raised a smile and a handshake).||Wherever we went, Ahmed smoothed the way, he knew all the 'good' shops, and steered us away from the dodgy areas. All we needed to do was to let him know what we wanted, and he would sort it for us.||||The town itself bustles, and it has some great open air bars where you can mix with fellow travellers from all over the world, and buy leather tribal bracelets from a Masai warrior (who will tie it on your wrist using only one hand - bizarre!)||At the end of our stay all Ahmed asked for was for us to buy some sweets for the local children, which we were more than happy to do.||This is the first time I've ever left a review of a place long after we have stayed there, but we thought it best if we painted a bit of a picture of the resort and its customs, as meeting Africa, head on, for the first time, can be a bit daunting.||We hope...

We stayed at the Blue Marlin (as it was then) in September 1997 and enjoyed every minute, but it closed the following year and has only just reopened under Italian ownership. The hotel as we knew it had superb seaview rooms, two pools, an open air dining area, and it it is right on the beach.||We went there because of the Hemingway connection (he stayed at the Blue Marlin exclusively - but that hotel has been replaced by the new one).||||The beach is superb, but expect to be approached throughout the day by people trying to make a living selling every kind of trinket, and at night, get used to the fact that the hotel security staff will follow you onto the beach and stay at a discreet distance for your safety.||This review, rather than focus on the hotel itself is just a little advice about Malindi and it's environs that we think might might help.||Firstly, wherever you stay in Malindi, you will be approached by locals who speak perfect English, offering their services as a guide.||On day one, we waved them away and walked into town, to be pestered every two minutes by the same offer from different people. ||This got to be so wearing that, the next day, we decided to choose a guide that looked and sounded ok, and have a chat.||The bottom line in Malindi is that a real guide will not charge you money - they earn that from the traders they take you to...e.g. we wanted some carvings, and Ahmed took us across town to the local tradesmens market and did all the intermediary translating for us, (he even asked us what we wished to pay and then haggled for a good price).||Batik? He took us around some very nice shops and waited patiently outside for us to finish our business.||This happened on each day we went outside the hotel - we would arrange to meet Ahmed if we wanted to go shopping, and if we were just sightseeing we went about unmolested ('we are with Ahmed" always raised a smile and a handshake).||Wherever we went, Ahmed smoothed the way, he knew all the 'good' shops, and steered us away from the dodgy areas. All we needed to do was to let him know what we wanted, and he would sort it for us.||||The town itself bustles, and it has some great open air bars where you can mix with fellow travellers from all over the world, and buy leather tribal bracelets from a Masai warrior (who will tie it on your wrist using only one hand - bizarre!)||At the end of our stay all Ahmed asked for was for us to buy some sweets for the local children, which we were more than happy to do.||This is the first time I've ever left a review of a place long after we have stayed there, but we thought it best if we painted a bit of a picture of the resort and its customs, as meeting Africa, head on, for the first time, can be a bit daunting.||We hope...

Me and my family always stay at blue marlin when we visit Kenya as it's very central to many places in Malindi. However, this won't be the case anymore as we’ve encountered an extremely bad experience. The staff themselves are very untrustworthy. During the second night of stay, I got robbed between 1-3am in the morning whilst me and my kids were sleeping (we were staying in room 4 which was very close to the main reception and you’d expect the security to be much secure). They have 5 guards, one at every entrance downstairs so I found it impossible to believe they had no idea what happened and that they weren't involved with the robbery. The staff are very unprofessional - There is no uniform and it’s very hard to identify who works there.||We woke up in the morning in shock realising that our passports, phones, MacBook, iPads and tablets and other valuables was gone including all the cash I had in hand. After letting the reception know, they seemed very blunt about the robbery as if they knew about it all along. Not once during that day did they come up to ask if we were okay or even come to check the broken window that was ripped through. The security of the window it's self was very bad. It only had a very thin piece of netting and glass windows you could slide out easily. ||When speaking to the manager, she didn't seem to care less about the robbery. She was very rude, helpless and wouldn't pay attention whilst we were speaking to her showing no sympathy at all. She said "this has nothing to do with us as we have 5 guards". This was a very ridiculous answer considering the fact that opposite the window there's usually a guard sitting there. Where was this guard??? We requested a full compensation of everything we paid and she claimed that they didn't have the money? We got the police involved and the staff, not even the manager got involved with the investigation process, showing that they clearly had no interest at all. Most of the staff had disappeared the day after the robbery as well leaving the whole hotel with 2 guards only. ||The hotel room itself had many problems. The taps and showers were barely letting out any water, the windows wouldn't close properly, the canopy's above the beds needed replacing and had endless holes in them and the place itself was very dirty when we moved in. We requested for the wifi password 2 days straight and we kept getting an answer that "it's not working". They had WiFi but when I requested the password from the manager she claimed that it’s only for...