Royal Zanzibar Beach Resort — Hotel in Unguja

The worst hotel I have ever stayed at. We spent 5 days at the hotel, and 2 full days were wasted on arguments and constantly dealing with problems. The manager is completely unfit for the role – absolutely clueless when it comes to solving issues or handling guests. This is not how you run a hotel where people are paying nearly $2,000 for just a few days.||A room change, due to literal "rain" (moisture dripping from our ceiling), took from 10 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. – we lost the entire day. The hotel is extremely rundown and outdated, and they only care about appearances (the garden, pool area, main entrance, and reception), which do look beautiful – but everything else is a disaster.||This is supposedly a 5-star hotel. In Europe or the US, it wouldn't even earn one star – that's how filthy it is. Unfortunately, the cleaning staff has little understanding of hygiene. Their body odor and the quality of their work both prove that. Our bed linens needed changing multiple times a day – on two occasions in a row we were given musty, moldy bedding. We still don't know why. The windows clearly haven't been cleaned in years, especially in the bathrooms.||We sent a total of 10 items to the laundry service, and they got so mixed up they barely managed to find them. We had to spend 2 more hours at the reception because of this – and of course, they still charged us the full $100.||The phones in the rooms don't work. In our case, two rooms had non-functioning phones, and other guests also complained about the same. The phones must be around 20 years old. The cleaners don’t even know what warm water is – they mop 8–10 rooms with a single bucket of water, which ends up making the rooms smell even worse. Tipping is expected – you won’t even get water in your room unless you pay. But even tipping won’t improve anything – just look at the moldy linens, dirty bathrooms, and total lack of vacuuming.||The air conditioning doesn't work – I’d guess it’s around 20 years old too. It blows air with a moldy, musty smell, but doesn’t cool or dehumidify the room. We had cockroaches in both rooms – big ones – even though neither was on the ground floor.||Most of the front desk staff seem to have no idea what industry they’re working in. Whatever your complaint is, they don’t know how to fix it, but they are absolute professionals at saying “we’re very sorry” and “sorry for the inconvenience.” Only two receptionists – Margret and Claudia – were genuinely helpful. The rest had no business being in hospitality.||You simply cannot compare the management and operation of this hotel to something like Riu Jambo. Most of the staff here probably haven’t even worked in a hotel before. The bartenders don’t even know what cocktails they offer – and the few that do are painfully slow, even with basic drinks. They run out of ingredients nearly every day – once they even ran out of ice!||And of course, tipping is expected here too. Without it, your 20-minute wait for a drink becomes 30 minutes, even if there are only three people at the bar. Unbelievable.||The main reason people come here – the infinity pool – was out of order. We weren’t informed in advance or at check-in. We spoke to about 15 other guests who were all in the same situation. No compensation, no mention of it, not even an apology – yet you still pay premium rates for false promises.||I was bitten badly in the room – we never found out if it was bedbugs or fleas, but I wasn’t the only guest with this issue. On every floor of every occupied building, including ground level, there was garbage, leftover room service trays, bottles, and cleaning bags scattered everywhere. One night, I even stepped on one. No one seems to care.|You can see that renovations are taking place, but they are far from being done professionally. As for workplace safety – they clearly have no idea what that even means. An actual 5-star hotel should never allow such conditions, especially when guests are exposed to this every single day.||To summarize: this entire hotel is a garbage heap with a nice garden and entrance. I had arguments with at least 25 staff members regarding our issues – most of them admitted, after a minute or two, that they were well aware of the hotel's problems and shortcomings. But the management and ownership are trying to cut costs as much as possible, and it shows. Sadly, this seems to be true.||The “all-inclusive” claim is a lie. Room service, quality drinks, and even the better meals at the beachfront restaurant – like lamb or beef steak – all cost extra. The beef steak is $35. The issue isn’t the price, it’s that you’re paying for an all-inclusive package where not even half of it is actually included. As for wine, only the house wine (about 400 ml per person) is available, and even that is in limited supply. One night, while five of us were having dinner, the waitress simply said it had run out. Funny, the night before we had dinner with our American friends and bought a $500 bottle of premium red wine – that didn’t run out.||To end on a positive note: there is a new manager responsible for the restaurant operations – Mr. Kushal. You can meet him daily around the dining areas, and he is the only member of the leadership team who truly deserves his position. I wish he could run the entire hotel – he could probably meet true 5-star standards. Always kind, always smiling, and 100% helpful. Even if there’s no problem – because everything is working under his supervision – he still asks if there’s anything that could be improved. He does an outstanding job, and I hope more people at the hotel learn from his attitude.||I’d recommend competitors make him a great offer – he might be the only reason this hotel hasn’t gone bankrupt yet.||Thank you for the time spent here – but I’m absolutely sure that even if this hotel paid me, I would never come back as a guest. I strongly advise everyone else to stay far away. Choose the neighboring Riu chain hotels instead – this place is a fake 5-star disaster. In Europe, it would’ve been shut down long ago.||For those who booked through TUI, their representatives are present at the hotel for 1–2 hours a day. They can assist with compensation claims, even on-site. They’ll file your complaint, including photos and all necessary documentation. The maximum refund amount is typically around 20–25% of what you paid, so it’s good to be aware of...

The resort as such has a big potential but is by far not at the level the price suggests.

We paid a 4 digit Dollars amount (yes well above 1000 dollars!!) per night per room for a family of 2 adults and 2 kids.

Starting with the basics: water in the bathroom is at times either not available or the pressure is so low that you can't really use it for shower or washing hands, etc.

Electric power goes off couple of times per day. Both water and electricity are a no-go for the price level, even considering local challenges.

Another basic in 2019 is WiFi: this is the worst of all! You can hardly use it in any room and even in the public areas (where according to the IT manager) should work best you can't watch a video (low quality) for more than 2-3 minutes in a row. It keeps disconnecting, keeps saying that "internet might not be available", etc. Even going for the Premium (5 dollars a day) option doesn't help. Pretty much the same spotty and very irregular connection in the public areas and close to no connection in the room.

Given the level of humidity in the open air we hoped to use the gym for our work out. Also this was very disappointing: first of all is not in a closed environment with Air Conditioning but rather a roof in a complete open air. Very few tools to be used. We wanted to use the treadmill, there are 2 and both were "out of order for the entire 8 days we were there".

Last but not least is the hygienic situation of the entire resort: you really have to close your eyes on many things if you don't want to get upset every 2 minutes: the way things are kept clean in the restaurant is far below any minimum standard you would expect in any public place let alone in a (allegedly) 5 stars hotel. The room was also never really cleaned well, bed-sheets were not changed in 8 days and towels were not consistently collected even if left in the bath-tub. Same experience in the SPA. If you decide to use it, avoid at least the shower, a disaster from hygienic point of view.

On the positive side, the pasta corner, managed by Francesco in the main restaurant, is really good and both variety of sauces and quality of the final dishes made it worth to try every day!

Swimming pool, which are designed in a very nice way and are very big and nice, are dirty and do not really give the feeling that your skin will be fine after having taken a swim. Really a pity as the pools as such are really nice.

We were here for the new Year's Eve and despite the price we paid (as per above) we had to pay another 250 dollars extra for the dinner and best of all, in case we wold have liked to have some sparkling wine (yes the hotel is ALL-IN) we had to pay that extra (over the dinner extra!!) again. I'm not talking only about best champagne, on the list there were wines for 20-50 dollars which were also not included!

All in all, the place is worth at best 1/4 of the actual price.

If they review the price list in that direction maybe, but again the hygiene is something you need to live with...

I talked and gave same feedback to the General Manager on site. Not sure if and how she will reply to this review. Only thing she had to say to me when meeting was that she is not the one setting the prices and that she will report my concern (not sure to whom). The day after she left a short notice into our room repeating the same thing (see picture below).

At check out they threatened us to leave the room by 10 AM otherwise they would charge 200$ more. Only upon my insistence they agreed to let us leave the room at 12 (which is the standard in all other 5 stars hotel).

When paying the bill, a few thousands of dollars, they asked for cash (!!!) or if I paid by credit card they would charge additional 5% fee. UNBELIEVABLE!! Only after I involved the General Manager they waived this extra fee.

A renovation seems to be in the plan (VERY much needed). If they really do a fantastic job and they halve their prices you might want to try your luck!

Here below a few picture of the infrastructure showing that also safety is...

The resort property is really nice with beautiful garden, large sized room and modern. However, at least 95% of the guests staying there are Italian and that creates a major negative discrimination issues for non-Italians, which is practiced openly.

The first morning, we went to the beach area, put the towels on the chairs and sat on them for some time. When it started raining, we left and came back in a short time. We saw that another family had occupied our chairs claiming that there were no towels left by us. We occupied the next set of chairs. An Italian couple arrived moments later and asked us to vacate, claiming those were their chairs. He was very aggressive and even assaulted me. A bunch of arguments were back and forth about whose towel was there on which chair, whose chair it is etc. Meanwhile, a lady from the Italian tour operator Francorosso showed up and started advocating for the Italian couple. When I asked why she is interfering, she clearly replied that he is Italian and she needs to favor him. Finally, when the resort staff arrived, the verdict was clear: He can't ask the family that took our place to vacate because they are Italian and I would have to vacate our current place because that other family is Italian too. Around the same time, a bunch of other Italian guests crowded around us, arguing in favor of both of those Italian families and quickly outnumbered us and we had no choice than to leave.

We thought this would be an isolated incident, but no. We got up early the next day, occupied a set of chairs and were sitting there for a few hours. We went for lunch, with our towels still there. When we came back, another Italian family had taken our place, and they still had our towels. Their family of 4 had 6 towels and the resort gives one towel per person against issued blue card. He still claimed there were no towels left. It was very hard to argue with him because he insisted that I speak Italian (which I don't) and he claimed he does not know English. Fortunately, someone else who was sitting next to us earlier came to rescue and witnessed that we were indeed sitting there earlier. Then, that family suddenly said it must be misunderstanding and someone must have removed our towels, which I don't believe.

In short, the rule is: Any Italian is allowed to take your spot at any time, but you can't take the spot of any Italian. We can have the beach chairs only if no Italian needs it.

We paid around $1,000/night and were really looking forward to having a good time, but they totally ruined our vacation. If I have to struggle like this daily for beach chairs and face discrimination from Italians, this is not a luxury resort worthwhile for any non-Italian.

Also, on the second day, earlier to the beach chair issue, I went to the bar to grab some cocktails. I was there first, the bartender had started making our drinks. Meanwhile, an Italian showed up. Bartender stopped working on our drinks and took care of the Italian person including getting popcorn for their kid.

Additionally, all the activities, games, sports, yoga, entertainment, happy hour etc. are all organized by Francorosso which is for their Italian guests. Therefore, non-Italians would be excluded from all such events.

In short, unless you are an Italian, do not stay in this resort.

Update 09/22/2025: Your canned response is completely meaningless and it proves that everything I wrote is true and you are not willing to change...