The Indian Ocean Beach Club is located on a powder white sand beach south of Mombasa, and surrounded by swaying coconut palm groves, and old baobabs.
It isn’t the kind of hotel that is all too popular nowadays, all singing all dancing, disco, high rise, bland, huge, the could be anywhere type of place.
The Indian Ocean Beach Club has been built to attract honeymooners, and romantics, and to recreate a sadly bygone age where service and opulence reigned.
To an extent, they have succeeded, and we found the food, and service to be excellent, the rooms are old fashioned, spacious, and private.
The staff obviously work hard to maintain the high standards that visitors have already come to accept as the norm, and this is a credit to the management staff at the resort.
The Indian Ocean Beach Club is small, and small is beautiful, because you get the little touches missing in large hotels, like bringing round iced towels and fruit to your sunlounger, and the flags to raise on the beach if you wanted service. Even better the service arrived quickly!!
If you haven’t been to Kenya before, be prepared for the hawkers outside the hotel grounds. You needn’t worry on the hotel property itself. The whole hawker, beach boy thing has been very well policed by the hotel, who seem to have given a license to a reputable group at one end of the beach. They won’t hassle you, instead you go to them, and haggle.
This means you can use the beautiful white sand beach to your heart’s content, and the hawkers get to earn a living, and we certainly were happy with that arrangement.
A good thing to do is to pay extra for an ocean front cottage, which means you are literally right on the beach, with amazing views of the ocean.
The rooms were great with TV, air con, four-poster beds etc. The cottage was immaculate, very very clean and very comfy.
We enjoyed the food, which was delicious, especially the grill and afternoon tea, and the themed buffet nights.
The other thing we would recommend is that you stay at The Indian Ocean Beach Club for a few days, then spend a few days on safari, then come back, and spend a few more days at the Beach Club to round off your vacation.
Finally I suppose if you go expecting a European five-star experience you might be a bit disappointed with the little things, but remember that this is African five-star.
In conclusion I would thoroughly recommend the Indian Ocean Beach Club.
The food was great, the service was excellent and the accommodation superb.
Unless you have been spoiled rotten at places like the St Geran, I don’t see how you can fail to have a great time there.
Word count: 469