The Hilton Yaounde is located in the city center overlooking the government buildings. I spent about a week there in Feb/Mar 2007. The hotel has all of the amenities of an American/European Hilton. Shiny lobby. Clean room. Modern bathroom with bidet. Satellite TV with CNN and two English movie channels--useful at the typical 4am jet lag wakeup. Pesonal safe and minibar. But, everything has a faded patina reflective of the age of the hotel. The lighting seemed dim just about everywhere. The air conditioning was just barely adequate. It took about 2 days to get the room cooled off. This is a very safe hotel. I never saw less than 3 guards in the main lobby and saw them periodically all around the hotel. There is only one way in through two front entrances which are always attended. This is the most expensive hotel in Yaounde. It seemed that the hotel prices are about 4x versus outside the hotel. A large bottle of water was 2000CFA in the hotel and 500CFA in the market across the street. A beer in the hotel is about 2000 and about 600 in a local bar. But the hotel prices are comparable to similar prices in US/Europe. There are two main restaurants - La Pachy, French, sitdown and another that is buffet style. There is also an outdoor restaurant near the pool with a lunch menu. They were promoting the Hilton Burger, Hilton Club, and Hilton Caeser which seemed funny in Cameroon The Hilton Club includes a fried egg. No one in our group experienced any ill effects from drink or food. There are two bars - lobby bar and the top floor called the Bar Panoramique. There is a nice view of downtown Cameroon. There is a sunken bar with a wall of floor to ceiling windows behind it. Cameroon at night looks like any city, but the scene during the day is less impressive. There was live entertainment on Fri, Sat and Wednesday nights. All the beer was local brewed except I think Heineken which costs more. But, there were HOOKERS IN THE BAR EVERY NIGHT! They just sit and watch. Sometimes only one. Friday night there were 4. Several of the men in our group were followed to the bathroom and the elevator and asked if we were looking for company. I was followed down in the elevator twice. But they did not leave the elevator after I said no about 4 times and got off. There are two kinds of taxis outside the hotel. There are permanent upscale airconditioned taxis just to the left as you exit. They cost 7000CFA nonnegotiable. Or the doormen would call a taxi from the street - the negotiable rate could vary from 1000CFA to 7000CFA. We typically got 2000CFA. The quality of these street taxis varied tremendously for the same rate, all the way up to Mercedes. There was a Business Center on first floor with three Dell computers that could be used to connect to the Internet for 3000CFA for 30 mins, or 4000CFA for 60 mins. There were Ethernet cable connections. There was a printer but you had to put your files on USB flash drive and give to them. The printer cost 800CFA per page. The speed of the Internet connection to the US was next to unusable. Slowest I have ever seen in a hotel. I finally connected via a dialup modem in the room and I think it was faster. Local call cost about $7 per hour. No wireless but they anticipate having it in future. No money exchange at the hotel desk. But there was a money exchange office near the desk. Their conversion rate was exactly correct. No monkey business. They were open on Sunday. The pool was immaculate. And there was a very nice exercise room. Basically, Hilton Yaounde is an average hotel by US/European standards. But, best in the area.

I stayed at the Hilton Yaounde twice in Sep/Oct 2006. The hotel has a very good location in the center of the city, close to the government buildings (traffic in the city is a real problem). The rooms were very good, big, clean, with air conditioning, satellite tv and safe. Staff was very friendly and in one of the hotel restaurants you can eat wonderfully without paying the usual high hotel prices. Payment with Mastercard can be a problem (I was warned in advance). I had to wait 40m to check out due to the difficulties of communication between the reception and mastercard. If you're going to Yaounde, its a place to be recommended.