We spent a week at the Samaki after volunteering in Tanzania for 3 weeks in March, and during a 6 month trip around the world. It was the most beautiful week of our trip! The owner is Italian and the food was superb, with fresh local fish each day pastas, salads, and beautiful desserts. Very clean and comfy rooms, lovely pool and white fine sand beach. Domenico is a true gentleman and so generous and thoughtful ... He treated us like family! All of the staff went out of their way to make sure we were comfortable. One of them made us a CD of African music when we mentioned that we liked the music that was playing! As our 6 month sojourn was spent volunteering we had to conserve funds, and Samaki was amazingly affordable. Thanks so much to "Il presidente" Domenico and staff from your friends Dr. Patrick and Debra on the US!

This is an OK hotel in an OK location.

I was travelling alone and didn't want to be in a big hotel complex, but in honesty staying here was a mistake. There is nothing around the hotel to walk to or go to, the beach is really not great and a little dirty. The tide goes out for miles, making it difficult to swim in the sea here.

I booked half board on the hope that there would be local places around where I could have lunch, but there wasn't so it was either pay $15 for buffet lunch (which was a lot I felt) or wait till the evening. You couldn't purchase a snack and there was no where local to go

A lot of reviews say the food was great, I would sooner say it was OK. The hotel wasn't that busy whilst I was there (as it was right at the start of the season) and maybe this influenced the food, but I felt it was very similar every night and certainly if you had lunch as well it was the same as dinner making it very repetative. Drinks (given the captive audience) were reasonably priced and a nice touch was that you could get mineral water free at any time from the restaurant.

I had a room in the grounds of the lodge, near reception, which was clean, quite large and very comfortable - so absolutely no complaints there. The pool and loungers were good and they regularly cleaned the pool through the day too. Hotel felt very safe

This is definitely a resort favoured by Italians - the hotel is owned by Italians, all the staff speak Italian and I was one of the only non-italians there. The guy that organised the tours (who goes by the name of Gian Luca Zambrotta) is very amusing and definitely slightly mad!

Overall, reasonable value for money and a reasonable hotel

We rely heavily on trip advisor, but in this instance it was wrong. We had originally been booked into Uroa Bay Beach Resort by our travel company, but after reading trip advisor reviews, we switched to Samaki Lodge. That was a mistake.

ROOM: We checked into Samaki Lodge for 1 night. We were offered 2 rooms -- a standard room on the 2nd floor overlooking the pool and a beachfront room at Palumbo Beach for a 20% surcharge. The beachfront room is barely large enough for the bed. It has an outside area that is enclosed by a metal fence and gate, that makes it feel like you are in a jail cell. And, it is very far removed from the rest of the property so it doesn't feel safe. We opted for the standard room in the lodge, overlooking the pool. It had a king-size, very firm (bordering on hard) bed, air conditioning, and salt water shower/sink. It did NOT have an in-room safe, which I consider to be mandatory for this type of resort and location. And, it had a very weird and persistent odor.

FOOD: As many of Uroa Bay's resorts are owned by Italians, so is Samaki Lodge. Therefore, the food is Italian-oriented. The quality of the food was okay, but nothing to write home about. The hours for each meal are very limited and all meals are buffet style. We had 1 dinner there and the "custom" pasta dish, prepared to order by a pasta cook, was a tuna ravioli. Not much customization. The breakfast was very basic and they didn't even have an omelette station, which is pretty unusual for a breakfast buffet.

LOCATION: The location is excellent for a beach resort. It is on Palumbo Beach, which is beautiful with a sand spit sticking out into the Indian Ocean for several hundred yards. Once you get past the constant hassling of the local touts trying to get you to buy tours and/or trinkets, you can enjoy the scenery and water. You can see the fishing dhows of the neighboring village as they go to and from the sea. A beautiful location and this is the strongest point of Samaki Lodge.

We walked down the beach from Samaki Lodge to visit Uroa Bay Beach Resort for lunch. Once we got there, we didn't leave and checked out of Samaki Lodge and into Uroa Bay. Please check our review of Uroa Bay for more information.

In our opinion, Uroa Bay Beach Resort deserves to be rated above Samaki Lodge. There really is no comparison between these 2 resorts. Uroa Bay is clearly superior on practically every level, except the beachfront of Samaki, which is a short walk from Uroa Bay.

We spent 4 nights at Samaki Lodge during this August (2011). The stuff is great, food is very good and the swimming pool and beach are great. Do not take the rooms near the beach. They are too far from the lodge. We were in the lodge and we had some problems with the rooms: in one room there is a sticky floor (no solution to this problem). Also we had problems with electricity and the aircondition. In sum, we think it is a good place to stay and very good value for the money. Do not take transportaion and trips from the lodge. You can pay 50% less at least by hiring a local taxi driver