Isla Bonita Zanzibar Beach Resort

very nice place, staff are kind and helpful, food was good, place is peaceful and nice, good beach. Would like to repeat later !

3 days ago New Thank you for a brilliant stay at Isla Bonita. The staff were lovely, particularly Elizabeth, with whom we made really good friends. She was lovely with our kids (age 7 and 9). The location was perfect for us, very quiet and not too touristy. Our kids played with the local kids on the beach a lot. The beach is breath-taking and you are literally right on it, white sand, clear water, very safe to swim, high tide was in the morning and evening so great for swimming for us. You eat your meals looking out over the beach. The pool is well maintained and clean and pretty big. We pretty much had it to ourselves. There are nice sun loungers and shade. The staff did a lovely meal for us on the last night, with beautiful table decorations, which was really sweet. They were able to cater for us mainly eating vegetarian food. The breakfast was nice, the staff cook you eggs and there is a buffet with fruit, bread, sausages, chips sometimes, varied things. And lovely fresh juice every morning. It does not serve alcohol but you can buy your own outside if you want to. The electricity does go off sometimes, a few hours each day but it didn't bother us. The water pressure in the shower wasn't great but it's not good to waste water anyway!

It is a 3 star hotel and that is fair. There are posher places where you can go and eat and have wine and things if you want that. But the food we ate at Isla Bonita was fresh and delicious and we were very happy. We felt a bit of pressure from the manager (Enrique) to eat at the hotel and to book trips via him rather than by ourselves, which made us a little uneasy at times. He arranged a boat trip for us to Mnemba which I wouldn't personally recommend as it was quite environmentally damaging (driving to get there, lots of boats chasing the dolphins, tourists jumping in the water at random, lots of people snorkelling on the coral in flippers, people offering us star fish to hold and big shells to buy). But I guess we just didn't really know what it was we were signing up for, and perhaps we want different things to other tourists. We would have been happy to just be taken out on the sea for a bit by a local person from the beach or something. The plastic waste is a shame and I wonder if the hotel could consider a water filter that the guests could use to refill bottles. We have seen this elsewhere in Tanzania. We took a LifeStraw filter bottle so we could drink the tap water and no-one got ill. Overall we had a fantastic time. We (my partner!) used the gym, which is really well equipped and we felt the welcome was very warm. We went to stone town (cab arranged by Enrique, thank you), which is an hour's drive, and had a great time at the market, the slavery exhibition, eating at Lukman's which was incredible. We did a really great spice tour - booked via "Get your guide" with lunch included, which we loved.

Nice room with great view on white sand beach. Kind hotel stuff, excelent breakfest - everything fresh and lots of fruits.

If you are interested in snorkeling from hotel beach, I would recommend different location.

The place was just for us! No noise, no travelers etc..

Upon arrival, there was an issue between booking paiment and the location. Then water was almost not existant in the room and the pool was half empty and of course no filtering... Breakfast was ok but we had jam etc but actually no bread to pread it on... Last but not least when I wanted a beer, the answer was not its ramadan and its a Muslim country... Sorry but I am a tourist on holiday and should be free to decide what I want to drink and eat and we should respect everyone's belief or state that its a non alcooholic place!