Review: Kempinski Hotel Bahía

Published May 3 2025, 7:23 AM, Updated May 3 2025, 8:53 AMThe five-star Kempinski Hotel Bahía is based in Estepona, to the west of Marbella, and set on a stunning coastline. Embracing an Arabic-Andalusian design that distinguishes it from other hotels on the coast, it is surrounded by luscious subtropical gardens covering an extensive area of 45,000 m².

Location

Only three km from the beautiful village of Estepona, 20 minutes from Marbella, and around 45 minutes (and around €80 EUR in a taxi) from Malaga Airport, this hotel is easy to get to and is an excellent luxury base.

We visited the Kempinski Hotel Bahía as part of a grand tour around this part of Spain. We also visited the Puente Romano Beach Resort and the Marbella Club which are both wonderful hotels.

Style & Character

The hotel’s exterior design is perfectly integrated into the surrounding nature. The vegetation has a major role in providing color and freshness to the resort. The wonderful flora creates a microclimate and a paradise for guests and birds. Kempinski Hotel Bahía also enjoys a beachfront position, with views of the sea and majestic horizons touching the coast of Africa, while Gibraltar serves as the backdrop.

To be honest, you don’t come to the Costa Del Sol and Marbella for its beaches. The beaches here are an unappealing brown sand and very thin ribbon-like beaches. You could be forgiven for thinking that the beach “sand” is just the resort’s soil on the ocean’s edge, but this brown sand offers a border to the sea, a place to paddle and laze on loungers, but is not a place for sandcastles.

The gardens, on the other hand, are dreamy, and because they meander right down to the ocean, the views are spectacular. The greenery in the garden is tropical and jungly, although there are plenty of lawns and loungers if you want to sun yourself or your family wants to run about.

Service & Facilities

An impressive free-form pool weaves its way down from the main building towards the ocean. This is surrounded by plentiful palms and foliage, giving way to extensive lawns with plenty of loungers. Although the beach itself is the classic dark sand of this coast, the expansive tropical grounds give this hotel a Hawaiian feel.

What is particularly lovely is that the lawns reach right down to the sand on the beach. There isn’t a defined end of the garden and beach, instead, they merge into one another.

Children aged 4 to 12 years can join the Kempinski Kids’ Club. Their team of professional entertainers is lots of fun. Most of the activities take place outdoors, with visits to the vegetable garden and the beach and specially selected menus for them at lunch or dinner.

The spa has been renovated recently to provide a modern and elegant design. The Fitness Club has the most state-of-the-art machines, which are situated in front of large windows looking onto the gardens, and offers personal trainers to help clients attain the best results within a shorter period of time.

The facilities include a Turkish bath, a Finnish sauna, an ice fountain, and a relaxing room for resting with views of the garden. The Bastien Gonzalez foot treatment studio is worth mentioning as it does so much more than your standard pedicure. They will literally fix your feet.

The hotel also provides the ideal backdrop for golfers. The golf concierge offers the world of golf on the Costa del Sol and a choice between over 20 golf courses within the area.

It is also easy to take a day trip from the hotel to see the cultural highlights of Andalusian cities, such as Ronda, Seville, or Cordoba, or even to cross the ocean and visit the Moroccan city of Tangier.

Rooms

All rooms at the Kempinski Hotel Bahía offer impressive terraces and gardens, many with sea views and all with warm and welcoming decor. You can waste hours every day watching the sunrise and sunset from your terrace.

The rooms are sorted into four different categories, varying in view and ranging from 42 to 45 m². The hotel suites are even larger, with generous terraces and balconies with astonishing views.

Many of the suites are at the top of the building so they have wonderful views across the property and down the coastline. Some have hot tubs and large terraces.

Suite bathrooms are large and spacious, but even the standard room bathrooms are generous in size.

if you’re choosing between rooms, pick a garden or sea view for peace, quiet, and a lovely outlook. The city view rooms to the back of the property are less appealing and noisier.

This is the kind of view (see below) you can expect from a Garden View room. It is super green and the sea is often visible in the distance.

Food & Drink

The hotel’s design focuses on the importance of light, bringing it into its lounges and restaurants. The lobby is impressive with a large glass window providing access to the lobby lounge terrace, from which there is a superb view over the tropical gardens. This is the perfect place to sit out in the evening and watch the sunset.

The four restaurants – Alminar Wine & Steak House, La Cabaña del Mar, El Mirador, and La Trattoria – offer a wide choice of Spanish and Mediterranean cuisine. The hotel’s own organic vegetable garden grows a wide variety of herbs that are handpicked daily by the keeper Alfonso, and used for cooking in the four restaurants. The hotel also has a pool bar beside the pools, where snacks and cocktails are served all summer. The Lobby Lounge is the second bar in the hotel and has an impressive terrace with lovely views.

You can see the palm frond-covered main restaurant and it’s white umbrellas, where you take the delicious and extensive breakfast in the forefront of the picture below. The breakfast here is excellent and you get two complimentary breakfasts for free along with a prioritized room upgrade (subject to availability), hotel credit, and more if you book via our luxury travel concierge.

Conclusion

Kempinski Hotel Bahía boasts lush subtropical gardens, a pretty brown sand beachfront, and panoramic views of the sea and Gibraltar. It’s the best hotel in Estepona by far, and its dreamy gardens which spread out from the central foyer, are easy to get around for families. It also offers good value for such a luxury resort on this coastline.

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