Joy of Zanzibar — Hotel in Unguja

The good Joy lies at a beautiful beach, cottages are nicely designed and clean. The food is excellent. About half of the staff is friendly, swift and professional. The cat is sweet, even slept in our room because we had to leave the doors open, see below.

The bad The other half of the staff was friendly but extremely slow. Tap and showerwater is brackish. After checking, we found out, that some barreceipts of other people ended up on our bill (was corrected, but took a lot of time though). Minor point: coffee and tea in the room was not replenished. Major point: the airconditioning in al the cottages was only working at night and even then it shut of about every minute. They fiddled a lot with it, after which it should work according to staff, which it didnt. Had something to do with low voltage on the grid and a generator that 'needed to rest', according to staff. French toast with bananas lacked bananas, which you had to find out yourself (could have said that upfront) When we asked why, staff said they were out of season. Which is totally ridiculous, since Tanzania grows like 30 varieties of bananas yearround and everywhere else, there were tons of them. After some comments, they suddenly were in season again. Prices are in dollars, payment by card costs 5%. We paid in Tanzanian shillings and got the worst conversion rate.

The ugly The price. You may think the points before are some kind "diva" behaviour, but we paid just under $300,- which makes aforementioned "mistakes" unacceptable. We got a very bad sleep to say the least, since it was extremely hot in the room and we were sticky all day of sweat and salt from the shower. When the hotel would be like a third of the rate they charged it would be forgiveable. after a lot of discussion we got a discount or the option to go to one of theor other hotel (one with salto water, the other with a malfunctioning airco as well, according to reviews) Not feeling happy to move or discuss any further we agreed upon the discount.

We did have a really nice few days at...

The rooms are big and spacious. However, you should check for insects before going to bed. The pool, the restaurant and the bar are very nice. There are plenty of sun beds to relax and enjoy the sunset.

Very important: when checking out, the Hotel will try to charge you more than your reservation for the Room Rate due to discrepancies in their system (they tried to make us pay 150$ extra). It happened to other couples checking out on the same morning and waiting for explanations. We suggest you ask for the Manager and the bill in full detail so that you pay only what is due (This took us 30 min). Also, card payment has a charge of 5%.

In addition, there is no hot water, the heater they have doesn’t work and they know it. The water from the tap and shower is salty, thus you do not feel properly clean after a shower. The room is very humid due to the shower drain and lack of proper ventilation...

We had a perfect holiday at Joy of Zanzibar. The place is truly magical, far from the tourist hustle at a quiet beach in the village of Michamvi. The hotel is very spacious, with plenty of sun loungers and a big pool, as well as direct access to the beach. The best part is the beautiful sunset every night. The food was great, they recently changed the menu and it offers a great variation of local and international dishes and is very delicious. You should definitely try their take on the Zanzibarian soup “Urojo”. We did not have any difficulties with checking-out or payments, as other comments mentioned here. All the staff and manager was extremely friendly and helpful and we did not encounter any problems....