Kena Beach Hotel — Hotel in Unguja

Nice hotel on a really lovely beach. The day-to-day staff are the stars of the show, the front desk team are lovely, the rooms were cleaned well and the bar and food staff were all really friendly. On top of that the ‘animators’ Kani and Momo were great with checking in and organising things around the hotel during the day and in the evenings. We had the half board option, breakfasts were nice but the dinners were quite similar each night so we ended up eating down the beach a few nights (Chichi’s is a local restaurant, 5min walk, with great food and cheap prices!). Would recommend not booking with the hotel for excursions - we did it for ease, but the costs were very high and the service quite poor in comparison to the hotel. Note that the ‘Safari Blue’ offered by the hotel isn’t the official safari blue, but a knockoff version, which isn’t made clear - and everyone on our boat was charged $50pp including transport, whereas ours through the hotel was $130pp. Unfortunately when we raised this the Operations Manager for the hotel was incredibly rude - we proposed an amount we thought was fair for the service rather than the full price, she made a big issue of it, before accepting our original proposal - which left a really sour taste from what had been a good stay. The remainder of the stay was a 4*, but the Operations Manager’s behaviour reflects really poorly on the hotel - good thing she’s not in a customer...

We had a great time at Kena Beach resort, we stayed there for 2 nights in december. It is located directly at the beautiful beach, there you have a possibility for swimming only at high tide, mostly in the afternoon. Special thanks to Babu for interesting reef walking tour during low tide. Hotel has a big, covered and clean pool, spacious & cosy rooms. Food and drinks were delicious. The staff was friendly and attentive. We especially liked the large and beautiful garden, you felt like walking in paradise! We would highly recommend to stay at Kena :)

The only critical point is the in-house travel agent, who has scammed us (!!!): we booked with him transfer including a short stop at spice farm (being nice to him to pay him instead of paying directly at the farm), we agreed with him that 30$ would cover entrance fee and fee/tip for the guide. At the farm they paid only the entrance fee of 4$ pp and asked to tip the guide separately. We were upset about the scam, directly called the agent, he said he "forgot" to tell driver to pay the guide...in the end the guide got additional 4$ from the travel agent....it means the agent kept 18$ for himself (he even didn't have to make any appointment at the farm since it was a walk-in tour)...it's not acceptable and embarrassing for the hotel to work with such an agency/person...it ruined all experience. Don't book any trips within...

Went to the hotel for our honey moon, they prepared everything, and had all our requests in mind for our anniversary night (went on our honey moon for our anniversary). We asked to have our special couples dinner at our deck, and they made it just magical. Dinner was perfect.

All in all, you really do not need to go to the city, the hotel has amazing food every single day. They offer three dishes, and you can choose which ever you like best. It was always 10/10.

The only reason why I do not give the hotel an "excellent" is because the entertainment is not that great. The last day we stayed in, we were planning on just chilling at the beach, but unfortunatelly the weather was very ugly. So, we played some games that were available at the game room. They are not in excellent shape, we wanted to play darts but there were only 3 that could be used, so decided to go for a puzzle.

If they could just up their game in providing with something to do on a rainy day, they would be just perfect.

Another thing is that if the weather is really bad, all restaurants are in the open air, so you should have fit flops and a wind breaker packed in your bag!

But, this hotel was really nice and we had a great time. Totally...