Hiliki House — Hotel in Shangani

Iliki Hotel (RETRO Hotel) We have traveled to almost every continent for over 14 years. We've stayed in over a hundred hotels and without a doubt this was THE WORST HOTEL we've stayed at. I will tell you about our bad experience at this hotel. After fifteen hours of travel, we landed in Zanzibar. We collected the suitcase, and our RETRO HOTEL, supposedly, had booked with us, for 12 dollars, to make the transfer from the Airport to the Hotel, but no one showed up. We had to take a taxi to get to the Hotel. We stayed 3 nights at the Retro Hotel, which seems to me to be in partnership with Hiliki Hotel. We slept at the Retro Hotel and had breakfast at the Hiliki Hotel. First, they put us in a completely dirty and ruined room, with broken windows, mosquito nets torn and with large openings, mold and rust in the bathroom and with the water heater over the toilet dripping over us. When we were already taking a shower and with everything already installed, they came knocking on our door saying that we had to change rooms. Unfortunately when we got to the second room it was even worse than the first. We had a big spider welcoming us into the room. I started looking for where this spider came from, and I noticed that the clothes closet and under the clothes were full of cobwebs. So that was one of many spiders that were in the room, in addition to the decaying state of the whole room! The staff is not very friendly. At breakfast, the staff doesn't understand English very well On the hotel's website it says there is internet in the room and it's not true. In our room there was no internet access. There is internet only on the top floor. WARNING: The photos they put of the rooms on the internet are completely misleading. The photos of the rooms posted on the internet are quite appealing, but in fact the rooms are in a very bad condition. It was a depressing stay at this hotel. It was really bad. This was our experience. The purpose of this outburst is not to harm the hotel, but rather that you read it and improve it so that the next guests have a better...

Very bad experice with our booking here. We kept in touch during our journey to Hiliki to say when we would be checking in, and when we knew we would be 1 hour late as our flight was delayed. We were told this was fine, and they sent us a taxi to the airport but when we were a couple of mins away from Hiliki the driver passed us the phone and we were told that we would be taken to a different hotel - several different reasons were given that didn't really make sense (A/C was broken, room wasn't ready). We were taken to another hotel on the other side of the town which we later looked up and found to be cheaper than the one we booked. We were told we may be able to move to Hiliki in the next couple of days. When I politely emailed and said I was not happy with the experience and wanted to move to Hiliki, I was rudely told it was my fault because I had arrived to stone town too late, despite the fact I had told them I would be 1 hour late during my journey and had been told this was fine. I was told to stay at the other hotel and no offer of refund for the difference in price. No one from Hiliki came to speak to us about this face to face during our 3 day stay. Also spoke to another couple in Zanzibar who had the exact same experience with Hiliki so I wonder if they may be moving their guests to a cheaper hotel and making a profit from the difference in price as it seems looking at these reviews this is a common thing to happen. At best it is a case of very poor organisation and...

This accommodation corresponded to the price range. Excellent location near everything we wanted to see. However, there were couple of issues. We booked on booking.com two double rooms. When we came, we got one single and one triple. The manager did not even know the price and I had to show it to him in the booking app. Half of the price should have been charged to the credit card and the rest paid in cash. Nothing was charged on the card and the full price was paid in cash in USD. I did not have the exact amount (55) so I gave 60. It took three requests for the change which did not come in USD but in schillings.||So all in all we did not have the rooms we booked and the money matters were not handled correctly which is just bad form.||Another thing - when I wrote a review on booking, 15 minutes after it was posted, I got an email saying that we the reservations was cancelled! They wanted to avoid the review despite the fact that we stayed there. Also, it is a system how to avoid paying commission to booking. If you want to stay there and book on booking, choose the option pay now, if possible, to...