Booking a serviced apartment in Nairobi directly

Booking with us is short. You pick your dates, the apartment is confirmed straight away, and you pay when you arrive. No card is taken and nothing is charged in between.

That last part is the unusual one, so it is worth explaining — along with why the rate is lower than the same apartment would be anywhere else.

What actually happens

• You pick dates on the site. The calendar shows what is genuinely free — it is the same data we work from, not a cached copy.
• The apartment is yours immediately. The nights are blocked out as you book and you get a confirmation by email. It is not provisional and it will not be resold.
• We are in touch before you travel with the address, how to find us, and anything you have told us about your arrival.
• A deposit holds it, and the rest can wait. Pay part online by card or M-Pesa to secure the dates, then settle the balance whenever suits — before you travel, or when you arrive.

Why a deposit, and why only part of it

A booking nobody has paid anything towards is a booking nobody has really made. We have held dates for people who then quietly booked elsewhere, and the cost of that falls on the next guest who asked for the same week and was told it had gone.

But asking for the whole stay up front is its own problem, and it is the reason we only ask for part. A good number of our guests are travelling for treatment at the Upper Hill hospitals and do not know their exact dates until late. Taking a month’s rent for nights nobody is certain of creates work for everybody and helps no one.

Part now, the rest when you know — the dates are genuinely yours, and nobody has paid for a week they end up not needing.

What has not changed is the arithmetic. The price you are quoted is the price you pay. There is no booking fee, no service charge, and no commission buried inside the nightly rate; the deposit is the first part of the rate, not an addition to it.

Arriving

There is no check-in hour, because most of our guests are not arriving at a convenient one. Flights land late; discharge happens when it happens. The door has a smart lock, and 24 hours before you arrive we email your access code and directions. Let security know you are checking in, and let yourself in — whatever the time, and without meeting anyone unless you would like to. We are a message away, day and night, for the whole of your stay.

Changing, extending, cancelling

Plans move, particularly on longer stays. If you have an account you can ask to extend from it directly, and we confirm if the nights are free — extended nights show as their own line, so what you have paid and what you owe stays clear. That matters if somebody else is paying; there is more on that in monthly and corporate stays.

Cancelling is a message or a click, and the terms are on our cancellation page rather than buried.

You do not need an account

Booking does not require one. If you end up with an account it is because we emailed you a link afterwards offering to set one up, not because we made you fill in a password before we would take your booking.

It is worth having for a longer stay — it is where you see what has been paid and ask to extend — but the booking works identically without it.