A three star hotel on Ojijo Rd in Greater Nairobi, sitting closest to Biashara Street and City Market. The deciding thing is that it stands south of the quarter, so it suits you if you want a pool and a night club in a green setting rather than a bed inside the halls.
01What it is
Parklands Shade Hotel lists broadly for a three star property: a 24 hour front desk, concierge, bell boy, multilingual staff, luggage storage, a safe and newspapers, which together cover arrival and the usual requests. It also lists two restaurants, a cafe, bars, a night club and a pool bar; a garden, terrace and picnic area; meeting, banquet and tennis facilities; and free wifi and free car parking. Yoga, laundry, dry cleaning and wheelchair access round it off. The list is thin where it matters most: no airport transfer, no gym, and no room service are named.
What that adds up to at Parklands Shade Hotel is a busy, leisure-heavy property that expects you to spend time on site, not to work from it. Smoking is permitted in a designated area and the same person can sunbathe in the garden by day and be in a night club there after dark. It suits a leisure stay, a wedding party or anyone visiting relatives nearby. It does not suit a serious business trip, an early departure, or anyone who wants to step out at night.
02The supplier's photographs
0328 facilities the supplier lists
Facilities are the supplier's list, not a check made on the ground.
04Standing outside the ten quarters
These hotels sit outside the ten quarters of the centre this site covers. Biashara Street and City Market is only the nearest of the ten, and it is where you would be heading, not where you are sleeping. Take that as the shape of your stay: you are in the wider city, just outside the ten quarters, on the edge of the centre, and anything in the CBD means travelling in and out rather than stepping out of a lobby.
The quarter itself is the market one, 0.63 km from Kenyatta Avenue at Moi Avenue, which is 8 minutes on foot in a direct line. The oldest retail streets in the city: Biashara for cloth and haberdashery, Muindi Mbingu for flowers, and the 1930s City Market hall behind them for produce, curios and a fish counter. Jamia Mosque's three silver domes close the block. The streets are narrow, shaded, and the only part of the centre where the shops are still one-family wide. It suits kikoi and kitenge cloth, curios without the tour-bus markup, and an hour of architecture. It is a daytime quarter: the halls shut in the late afternoon and the streets empty with them, so plan the return before that.
Read the nearest quarter, Biashara Street and City Market05Booking it
Booking Parklands Shade Hotel is a straightforward process, and you can do it online before you arrive. Most rooms here can be cancelled free, and you book them through app.impt.io. Every confirmed booking removes one tonne of CO2, at no extra cost to you. Five percent of what you pay comes back as IMPT credit, out of the hotel commission rather than added to your bill.
Facts on this page come from the booking supplier's record: star class, address, photographs and facility list. Guest scores come from verified stays. Nobody from this site has stayed here; the quarter copy around it is this site's own.
06Questions
Where is Parklands Shade Hotel?+
It is on Ojijo Rd in Greater Nairobi, south of the centre rather than inside it. The site records it at 2.12 km from Kenyatta Avenue at Moi Avenue, which is 27 minutes on foot in a direct line. The nearest of the ten quarters covered here is 1.64 km from Biashara Street and City Market.
What facilities does the hotel actually have?+
It lists two restaurants, a cafe, bars, a night club and a pool bar, plus a garden, terrace and picnic area. There is free wifi and free car parking, a 24 hour front desk, concierge, meeting and banquet rooms, a tennis court and yoga. No gym or airport transfer is named.
Should I stay here to be near the city centre?+
The area around Parklands Shade Hotel is a daytime quarter: the halls shut in the late afternoon and the streets empty with them. The site's own line about the surroundings is that they are narrow and shaded, and the only part of the centre where the shops are still one-family wide. Treat west of the centre as a daytime base, not an evening one.
What does the guest score mean?+
The property is scored 3.7 out of 5 from 6 reviews, which is a small sample. Read it as a broad signal from very few people and not as a reliable average of the hotel. Where the facilities list does not cover what you need, ask the hotel directly.
