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4.5
#14 of 94 hotels in Kigali
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STEP TOWN HOTEL is a first class modern motel. We are located in the center of Kigali city near Saint Famile church KIYOVU MUHIMA a quiet, secure and refreshing area where you will enjoy the best views of the city from the motel. We provide accommodation with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms, television-DSTV, satellite dish and wireless internet. Also, available is a mini-bar and restaurant serving western and African cuisine. We do offer airport transfers.
Star ratings are intended to indicate the general level of features, amenities, and services to expect. This property is classified according to Giata.
Places to stay are graded on a 0-100 scale. The higher the grade, the easier it is for travellers to find restaurants and things to do within walking distance.
We spent one night in Step town hotel, which is located in a quiet area in Kigali. The room was clean and well equipped and the beds were comfortable. The staff was professional and friendly. The ratio quality/price is excellent Altogether, a good hotel in Kigali
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Date of stay: July 2023
Value
Location
Service
Trip type: Travelled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
While transmiting through Rwanda on my way to Uganda, the Step Town motel was recommended. I was able to make all travel arrangements as well as a pick up at the airport with John via email. He was prompt and polite and always got back to me right away. Even though my flight was 2 1/2 hours late, Thomas picked me up with a smile and whisked me off for a good night of sleep followed by a hot shower in the morning and a delicious breakfast. The views from the hotel are amazing. Great location, friendly staff and delicious breakfast make this a wonderful place to stay when visiting Kigali
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Date of stay: July 2022Trip type: Travelled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
I had a very comfortable 2-night stay at Step Town. The hotel is not far from Kigali city center, & the area where the hotel is located is quiet, safe, & has nice views over Kigali. The staff was warm and very welcoming. The room I stayed in was clean & comfortable, and the place had a relaxing vibe. This was perfect as I was very tired & sore coming from my strenuous gorilla trek in Uganda just the day before, then crossed the border from Uganda to Rwanda the next day. This hotel was exactly what I needed for my much-needed rest. The onsite restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, & dinner. The breakfast that was included with my room was plenty & delicious, with eggs, toast, fresh fruits, fresh coffee, & juice. They have a good menu selection so I ended up having lunch & dinner here on my first day. The food & service were excellent. Wifi on the property, including the room, was also excellent. I highly recommend this hotel to anyone staying in Kigali for a couple of nights or more.
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Date of stay: July 2023
Value
Location
Service
Trip type: Travelled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
This hidden gem is the best value in Kigali. John the manager makes sure your stay is top notch & the staff are great too. Clementine the Certified Massage therapist was amazing for my wife & I. The food service is excellent with great selection & delicious taste. The rooms are clean & spacious with modern bathrooms. This was my second time here & we will be back!
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Date of stay: February 2020Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We stayed in Step Town after flying into Rwanda and starting our tour of the country. The staff were extremely friendly, welcoming and helpful. The room was extremely large and clean and the grounds of the hotel really pretty. Dinner and breakfast was also really tasty with plenty of choice. Would definitely stay for longer if we had the chance!
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Date of stay: June 2022Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Motel is very clean and comfortable. Our room was 12 . And it had best view of Kigali. Internet was very fast and unlimited it was a also good reason to choose the Step Town. I like it so much. Chef was fantastic. He has thought us how to cook African tea. And his Fish brochette and African Tea is the best.
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Date of stay: May 2021Trip type: Travelled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
I was in Kigali eight weeks in the summer 2010 conducting research and Step Town genuinely made my stay. I almost hesitate to write a review this gushing - however deserved - in the fear that this gem will be booked full on the next pass through what is rapidly becoming an immensely important African capital city. But if it is becoming so important, it is only because of the extraordinary dedication, perseverance and good-will exhibited by all Kigali-ites, and really all Rwandans. And since Step Town quite honestly embodies the strikingly hopeful, hard-working and above all palpably welcoming spirit of the brave new beautiful Rwanda, to NOT write this review would be to insult that genuine hospitality. So John, from your friend Tom, here I go on that long overdue review I promised:
Staff: Though the rest of the review could lead one to believe otherwise, the draw of this Kigali gem starts with staff. They are a genuinely friendly, immensely considerate, highly industrious and overall, incredibly hospitable bunch. This applies firmly from the management down, as one finds out in a long stay. Even the owner and his glowing family are very friendly with longer-staying guests, taking deep personal interest in their experiences. The best sign of world-class service is the ability to strike up a true connection with guests that does not lead to complacency in the services you ultimately are paying something for. Step Town achieves this and then some. That the staff combined are fluent in what I came to understand are not less than ten languages helps too. (Let me try, John: English, French, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kenyan & Tanzanian Swhahili, Gikuyu, Luganda, etc.). A run-down of the staff: * John is the manager. John is the best hotel manager in the world. Period. Stay for yourself and see. (Robert is his highly friendly lieutenant; he is great too. Start talking to him about movies and you could be up all night, since he is anyways as night manager!) * Jean-Paul is the chef. Jean-Paul will make your day with his food (more on this later) AND his jokes. I have rarely encountered the chef who takes such a strong, genuine interest in the eventual consumer’s preferences and experiences...This includes family. * Rooney and Fisto are all-purpose gentlemen who keep the place whirling by doing a little bit of literally everything. Two friendlier and hard-working gentlemen would be hard to come by in Kigali, or anywhere. * Clementine and Joviah clean the rooms, change your sheets (extraordinarily well!), serve food and drink, and are amazing company. The Kigali Serena or Mille Collines simply could not offer the level of individual attention they provide. * Athanase is the hard-working, friendly landscaper. He sports blue overalls, has an infectious smile and is the reason Step Town is the best-landscaped hotel in the capital.
Rooms: I stayed in two rooms during my stay: A more expensive bigger suite on the first floor across from the reception area and the later one just at the top of the hotel’s staircase on the second floor, which was a bit smaller. The price difference between them was not more than 25%, and for a solo traveler (or even a couple) the second room had more than enough space. Both had quite nice/spacious armoires, amazingly comfortable beds and sheets, full bathrooms with excellent plumbing (shower only in the cheaper second room) and TOTALLY reliable hot water, which is extremely impressive in Kigali, and again, presents a virtually unbeatable value. I had to shake off jokes about my “African lodgings” upon return; the rooms promise comfort that would be at home in any country. I also understand their biggest suite has a highly functional bathtub jacuzzi.
Location: Step Town really could not be more central. It’s minutes from the heart of downtown (the flagship stores, banks, restaurants, markets), President Paul Kagame’s house (not open to the public), the Hotel des Mille Collines (‘Hotel Rwanda’) and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre. It’s a ten-minute, USD$1.10 motorcycle taxi ride.
N.B. Federal police eye-ball scan ALL bags on visitors at the memorial’s main gates and very respectfully pat you down; it’s a standard security measure as there have been attacks on the site.
N.B. II: Be sure to ask John to write out general directions to the hotel for any and all prospective motorcycle/automobile taxi drivers - or whomever - should you find yourself far from the hotel or get lost in Kigali. The Rwandan capital remains an astonishingly safe city as far as predation on unwary outsiders is concerned, and people are ever eager to help. Also, the motorcycle taxis are very safe, just hang on tight and negotiate fares up front! This advice about the directions to the Step Hotel in particular, though is important primarily because repeating “Step Hotel” (don’t bother with the “Town” part of the name) will generally elicit blank stares in the best case scenario OR lead them to well-meaningly bring you to the significantly more expensive Kigali hotel known as Stipp, in a fairly distant part of the city. (The primary trouble is that Step remains a small, relatively lesser known hotel, but this will change!) The driver will then quite justifiably wonder why you’re not leaving their vehicle/possibly expect further payment to correct what I gather is a fairly frequent mix-up and bring you to the Step Hotel. When I mentioned such an occurrence, John personally hand-wrote directions for future drivers that I carried with me from then on, resulting in a near total end to confusion. For what it’s worth, my best Rwandan friend confided that they were quite eloquently put! As near as I could make out, they directed drivers to Step Town through the old city landmark Missionaries of Charity school on the right hand side as you descend ‘the big hill’ to the city center. Be careful going up and down this guy on foot, even more on motorbikes - “Buhoro buhoro” meaning roughly “take it slow” would be wise to say before a descent. Also, if a driver is truly stumped, one can always through out “l’eglise de Sainte Famille”: a universal old Kigali shibboleth.
Food: If you’re like me, staying at a hotel no matter how long requires a good feed after a day of business or tourist activities. Thankfully, Step covers you on all fronts.They offer an amazing DAILY COMPLIMENTARY breakfast that fueled my own work. You get a lot of buttered toast, local tea/coffee (really only ever did the tea, which was excellent: On longer term stays, I’m sure Jean-Paul would be happy to brew anything a guest brought from the Nakumatt in the UTC mall, Kigali’s main shopping center overlooking the central traffic rotary), absolutely DELICIOUS fresh fruit: pineapple, papaya, ‘tree tomatoes’, green apples, bananas. Did I mention that it was all free? Bring your own peanut butter/nutella to mix up the toast for long stays, is my last advice/input on breakfast, beyond being wary of the need to go right back to bed after such a morning feast! (Which, I should add, is by no means typically Rwandese or customary in other KGL hotels - not for free EVERYDAY anyway.) I had further proof I’d made it into the Step Town family when customary fruit trays were prepared beginning a couple of weeks into my stay based solely on the staff’s thoughtful observations of my habits.
For the tasteful lunch/dinner portion of the menu, Step features excellent versions of classic Rwandan mainstays like goat brochettes, ALWAYS with a heap of hot and delicious fries. Mayonnaise is the standard condiment, but Step Town is also an oasis of Heinz ketchup in a Kigali sea of syrupy pink ‘imitators’ - just ask for it! They never were able to get the requisite hamburger ingredients though, when I was there: my one complaint!
Jean Paul’s spaghetti bolognaise is also amazing. It is a dish on offer in a couple places around the city, but his was better than the more expensive incarnation offered in Chez Robert, the posh, too-expensive restaurant across from the Hotel Mille Collines.
For me, though, NOTHING in the restaurant or anywhere else in Kigali compared with his fish brochettes. Perfectly juicy and gigantic cuts of Kivu tilapia on a kebab with a little lime drizzled on top...wow, I’m honestly salivating now.
Simply put, while Kigali offers an increasing array of great restaurants, one misses nothing by eating in. There are numerous public areas for long stays of sitting, eating and drinking the national Primus beer, which happens to pair exquisitely with all of the above, but any food will also be immediately brought to your room upon request.
My only note here is that preparation time can be just a bit long by foreign standards. This occurs all over Rwanda and in no way should be taken personally. If you expect to be in a bit of a rush, try to get your order in early to John, Jean-Paul or Joviah/Clementine and all will be right. I found calling ahead to John if I was a bit hungry just before making my way back home really, really helped. The rare issue I had in this area seemed most frequent (and again, still infrequent overall) around lunch, when it naturally takes a little while to get appliances going/ingredients assembled, etc.
Other guests: An often neglected aspect of evaluation. In general other guests were far more transient, largely Western in origin. Many were using it as a base to briefly sight-see and take care of things in Kigali before moving on to other parts of Rwanda or indeed other countries of the continent. Step Town is the kind of hotel where one can as easily keep to him/herself for a couple of nights for a perfectly pleasant experience or get to know fellow guests. Friends made for me included many other student researchers, a Canadian African Studies Professor, a retired American commercial pilot traveling with his wife and daughter who’d just finished a long volunteer stint in neighboring Uganda, a South Carolina construction magnate and a former head of Amnesty International in the US. The hotel also seems to maintain a close relationship with certain NGO workers, who love it for the excellent monetary value it represents and how truly central in the city it is.
Miscellaneous Amenities: Good sized TV’s in all rooms. (Ask John to beam in a station for you from the main set-up, as I did to my eventual horror the night of the 2010 NBA Finals)
Quick laundry service: Pay by article, very fair rates - everything is sun-dried as of Aug. 2010.
An absolutely beautiful balcony area with a striking view of some of Kigali’s sloping hills and valleys and the new U.S. embassy too. To call the breeze one reliably gets up there Mediterranean is nothing short of precise.
With enough prior warning, John was quite happy to provide a comfortable lift in the hotel’s Toyota Camry to and from Kigali Airport (this will save AT LEAST USD$20), and occasionally into town, if our schedules coincided.
Here I should also stress for guests new to the hotel and even the country that John is great about necessary but relatively daunting foreign chores like money withdrawal from the right city bank, and subsequent currency exchange (he’ll do ALL he can to ensure you’re getting a fair rate) as well as, in my own experience, obtaining and setting up a local cell phone(s)/minutes, which is a wise thing to do vs. a usurious international phone experience.
Last but not least, an impressively full bar: Lots of beers, liquor and wine and a nice wooden bar proper & comfortable stools PLUS a very large Hi-Definition television above it. The World Cup looked amazing on it. I only hope John starts carrying the agacupa nini ibyieri ikonje!!
Well, I don’t think it’s necessary to go on much more. If you find yourself in Kigali and not at Step Town, you’ve likely made a mistake, or John is deservingly booked up through 2013. Keep a room semi-open for me though!
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Date of stay: July 2010
Value
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Location
Cleanliness
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Trip type: Travelled on business
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
City Hotels on the continent of Africa can vary and be quite expensive.Strp Town is a safe bet.They will pick up fron Airport and when you arrive the location is terrific -with tremendous views over city.Rooms are ok not luxurious and beds clean.Staff are excellent
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Date of stay: October 2011
Value
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Travelled on business
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
I stayed at the Step Town for almost two weeks whilst on a field research trip. This place is hard to beat in terms of value, cleanliness, and standards. As the other reviews state John, the manager, is exceptionally helpful and friendly - he often goes above and beyond for his guests, which for the most part is highly appreciated (although there were some guests who didn't seem so appreciative of his efforts, and almost expected him to pull out all stops all the time). The rest of the staff there are incredibly friendly and helpful also. As far as I could pick up, the two women and the man who work in the restaurant and deal with the guests speak good English, French, and Kinyarwanda (I think some of the staff also speak Swahili). The maintenance, security crew, and kitchen staff are also really friendly. The food at the restaurant is fantastic (I recommend the fish fingers and the chicken drumsticks), and breakfast consists of a choice of a hot/cold drink (coffee, tea, juice, etc), an egg based dish made to order (omelette, scrambled eggs, fried eggs etc), toast, and a fruit plate. This is included in the nightly rate price. The place is impeccably clean, and the maintenance staff seem to be on constant cleaning binges throughout the day. Room size is smallish, which was fine as I was travelling on my own and was only using my room to sleep, but if you are travelling with a partner or think you will be spending more time in your room than usual be sure to request a larger sized room. Wi-fi works throughout the whole hotel (in rooms and in common areas), signal strength and speed is pretty good. There were maybe 1 - 2 days where there were internet issues, but there were issues with power and electricity in general on those days - all the hotels would have been experiencing the same issues. The location is very central, and it's a short walk to UTC (up a VERY steep hill, so your legs'll look fantastic after daily treks up and down the hill!!). However, describing the exact place of the hotel can be tricky when you are using a driver- so I took the advice of another reviewer and asked John to write up a description of the hotel's location for me and that way I could just show it to taxi drivers (otherwise, saying 'Step Town' is more likely to get you dropped off at the Stipp Hotel or the Downtown Hotel, which are nowhere near the Step Town). I felt incredibly safe staying there and there were certainly no issues with my belongings or personal security (apparently this is not necessarily the same at some of the other bigger hotels). So all in all, the rate at the time I was there was US50 per night (including breakfast), which is just outstanding considering the next reasonable options were the Milles Collines and Serena, which were both nice looking but really just seemed to be big corporate hotels charging between US200 - 380 per night (however, if your company is paying, or money isn't a problem, and you need to be in the part of town where the ministries and diplomatic missions are , then Milles Collines and Serena are in a good position). The Step Town was very friendly in terms of staff and guest. I hate travelling to big hotels where everyone keeps to themselves. The Step Town has a guest house feel, so I met a range of interesting doctors, NGO workers, volunteers, tourists, and corporate business people. Most people were happy to sit out on the balcony or in the restaurant and chat with each other, which is really nice when you are travelling solo (one's own company can get incredibly boring after a period of time). People were staying long term and short stay (on their way to see the Gorillas). I also had some great conversations with the women who worked in the restaurant and it was so sad when I left. All in all, I could not recommend the Step Town more highly (and I did stay in other accommodation whilst in Rwanda so I do have good points of comparison), I believe that it enhanced my work and personal experience for the better in Kigali remarkably.
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Date of stay: November 2011
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Location
Cleanliness
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Trip type: Travelled solo
Room Tip:Ask for a big room if travelling as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We travelled to Rwanda with two other couples in December. We can't say enough about this hotel. Our flight was delayed and there was some other confusion that made us arrive very late. John kindly picked us up even though is was after 2:30 a.m. when we arrived. The staff were excellent and very welcoming, and the rooms were spotless. We stayed for dinner one evening and the food that we enjoyed there set the standard for the remainder of our trip.
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Date of stay: December 2011
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
There are more places to choose from in the Kigali area.
PRICE RANGE
HK$389 - HK$404 (Based on Average Rates for a Standard Room)
ALSO KNOWN AS
step town hotel kigali
LOCATION
RwandaKigali ProvinceKigali
NUMBER OF ROOMS
17
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