A four star hotel on Parklands Road in Greater Nairobi, with two pools, tennis, a spa and a casino under one roof. It suits people who want the facilities to be on the property, and who will take a lift in and out of the centre rather than walk the quarter.
01What it is
Southern Sun Mayfair Nairobi is a four star property on Parklands Road in Greater Nairobi, and the list it publishes is long. You get an outdoor pool and a kids pool, a health club, a sauna, a spa, a tennis court and a garden with a terrace. There is a restaurant, bars, a bar and snack cafe, a casino, a business centre and a meeting room. Free wifi and free car parking are both listed, along with a 24 hour front desk, 24 hour room service, concierge, laundry, dry cleaning, luggage storage and a gift shop. The list is thinner where it matters for the location: no airport transfer appears, no shuttle to the centre, and no kitchen or self catering option.
For someone staying here, Southern Sun Mayfair Nairobi works as a base with everything on site, which is the point of it. The centre is 2.44 km from Biashara Street and City Market, which is the nearest of the ten quarters this site covers, and that quarter is a daytime one, its halls shut in the late afternoon. So this hotel suits a visitor who wants pools, tennis and a spa at the end of a working day, and who is content to take a car in and back rather than be in the middle of things. It does not suit anyone who wants to step out of the lobby into shops, food and street life, or who dislikes depending on a vehicle for every trip.
02The supplier's photographs
0336 facilities the supplier lists
and 5 more on the supplier's own record. 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 Southern Sun Mayfair Nairobi is straightforward, and the cancellation terms are the reason to do it through this site rather than at the desk. 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 exactly is Southern Sun Mayfair Nairobi?+
It sits on Parklands Road in Greater Nairobi, outside the CBD itself. It is 2.96 km from Kenyatta Avenue at Moi Avenue, which is 37 minutes on foot in a direct line. The nearest of the ten quarters this site covers is Biashara Street and City Market, which is a daytime quarter, its halls shut in the late afternoon.
What does the hotel actually have on site?+
Two pools, one outdoor and one for kids, plus a health club, sauna, spa, tennis court, garden and terrace. There is a restaurant, bars, a casino, a business centre and a meeting room. Free wifi, free car parking, a 24 hour front desk and 24 hour room service are all listed. The rooms run to under 200 and no transfer service is listed.
What does staying in Greater Nairobi mean for getting into the centre?+
You are outside the CBD rather than in it, so every trip in and back needs a car. The quarter nearest the hotel is a daytime one, and its streets empty in the late afternoon. Plan your meals and evenings around what the hotel itself has, rather than around the centre.
What is the guest score and how much should I read into it?+
The score is 4.4 out of 5, from 3159 reviews. That is a settled figure across a large number of stays rather than a handful of recent ones, so it is a reasonable guide to how the place is run. It says nothing about whether the location suits you, which is the part you decide.
