I have spent the last five days at Sheraton Kampala. Overall it has been a very positive experience.

The staff are pleasant and generally eager to please. I have been addressed by name by quite a few staff members since taking breakfast on the first morning of my stay.

On arrival I was assigned what was described as an upgraded room on the 7th floor. Please note that based on this room and another upgraded room used by a colleague, most bedrooms in the renovated Sheraton do not have a bath, but instead a large walk in shower with rainshower head.

After speaking with the duty manager (a nice lady named Rose) on the telephone after arriving in my room, she explained that no suite was available when I arrived (I enjoyed a 11:00 check in having taken the hotel transfer from the airport). I asked if the hotel could provide a Platinum suite upgrade if possible from the next day for the rest of my stay. Rose said that she would leave a message for the following day's duty manager.

As upgrades are normally based on availability on check in, I was pleasantly surprised to received a call around 2100 that evening asking if I was ready to move.

Unlike too many suites that are essentially two interlinking bedrooms with different furniture in each room, I have spent the last five days in a small but perfectly formed one bedroom suite on the 11th floor, with a full bathroom (bath but no walk in shower), guest toilet and sitting room. This made it much easier from a work and relaxation perspective, and made using room service a much more comfortable experience.

There are some points that were a little disappointing. The Club Lounge (despite being promoted on the hotel website) was still not open - staff were generally quite sheepish when I asked when it was opening. The general answer was "soon"

Breakast was fine as long as you did not want eggs. Probably based on the feed used with chicken's in Uganda, the egg yolk had no colour and generally the eggs were tasteless. However, they were very willing to prepared eggs any way you wanted.

The concierge was disappointing and pretty unresponsive. I was offered a car plus driver for uds150 per day, and he was unwilling to contact Hertz to get a quote for a car hire. His immediate reaction was that none of the guests staying at the hotel would hire a car, as they would all prefer a driver. I was surprised, as althought the traffic can be manic in Kampala, and some fo the road services outside the city were not paved, the traffic was not as mad as Cairo or Bangalore

A Ugandan government colleague was able to get the same car and driver for 100,000 Shillings (around 50 euro). Imagine my surprise when the receipt indicted the company providing the service was based at the Sheraton).

The Sheraton is close to the Serena, the conference centre and city centre, and I would most likely stay there again the next time I am in Kampala. Admittedly, I might have broken up my stay by going to the Serena for a day or two as it has a great reputation, if I had not been so promptly moved to the suite