Where to stay in Zanzibar for a honeymoon

Book the quiet coast

A honeymoon here, in four lines

• Split the stay. Two nights in Stone Town, then the coast. One transfer, and it turns a beach week into a trip.
• Matemwe and Pongwe for privacy. Small hotels, very few people, and in Pongwe's case water in the bay when the coast either side has drained.
• Michamvi for the sunset. The tip of the south east peninsula faces west at its northern end, which nothing else on that coast does.
• Budget $250 to $700 a night. For the rooms people actually mean when they say honeymoon. The gap is privacy rather than thread count.

The two mistakes

The first is booking a beautiful hotel on a coast that empties at low tide without knowing it. Half of every day with the sea five hundred metres away is not what anyone pictures, and the honeymoon versions of these hotels are often exactly the ones on that coast.

The second is booking somewhere isolated and then discovering that dinner is the same restaurant for seven nights. Small hotels here rarely have a second option and the nearest alternative can be forty minutes away.

Neither is a reason to avoid those places. Both are reasons to know before you book.

Where to base a honeymoon

Five options, ranked by how private they actually are rather than by how they are marketed. What each price step buys is broken down in the top end of Zanzibar.

Whichever you pick, do two nights in Stone Town first. It costs one transfer and it is the part people talk about afterwards.

Which coast

Matemwe and Pongwe on the north east are the sweet spot: small hotels, few people, and Pongwe in particular keeps water in its bay when the coast either side drains.

Michamvi, at the tip of the south east peninsula, is the most private and the most isolated. It is also where The Rock is.

The northern tip has the swimming and the choice of restaurants, at the cost of being the busiest part of the island. It is the safer choice and the less romantic one.

Splitting the trip

Two or three nights in Stone Town at the start, then the beach, works better than it sounds. The town is the part of Zanzibar with a history and doing it first gives the beach half something to be a contrast with.

For anyone adding a mainland safari, do the safari first. Arriving on the coast with the four in the morning starts behind you is what makes the whole thing land.

What the good hotels actually differ on

At this level the rooms are all fine. What separates them is the beach in front, the kitchen, and whether the staff remember your name by day two.

The beach is checkable before you book and most people do not check it. The kitchen shows up in recent reviews, where the phrase to look for is people mentioning specific dishes rather than praising the food in general.

The third is not checkable and is why the small places with twelve rooms tend to beat the resorts with ninety, at the same price.

Private, or private with a village next door

Total privacy on this island means Michamvi, Mnemba or a villa, and it means eating in the same place every night and driving thirty minutes for anything else.

The alternative is a small hotel on a coast that has a village on it, like Matemwe or Jambiani. Less isolated, considerably more interesting, and dinner has options.

Couples who want a week of seeing nobody should take the first. Couples who want a week together in a place should think hard before dismissing the second.

Things worth booking, and things not to

Book the sunset dhow privately. A hundred and fifty dollars for the boat to yourselves at the end of a hot day is the best money spent on most honeymoons here.

Book The Rock if you want it, well ahead, and go for lunch rather than dinner.

Do not book a packed itinerary. The most common regret people report is having filled a honeymoon with excursions when what they wanted was four uninterrupted days.

Which month for a Zanzibar honeymoon

Weather, crowds and price pull in different directions here, and the sweet spots are narrower than the brochures suggest.

The full month by month breakdown is in when to go to Zanzibar.

What to ask a hotel before you pay

Small hotels here answer these in an email within a day. The ones that do not answer are telling you something.

• How far does the sea go out at low tide, in front of you? Not the coast, the hotel. A kilometre along the same shore can be a completely different afternoon.
• Is there a second restaurant within walking distance? If not, you are eating the same kitchen for seven nights. That is fine if the kitchen is good and worth knowing either way.
• Is the room air conditioned, or fan only? February and March are genuinely hot and humid. A fan-only banda is romantic in a photograph and hard work at two in the morning.
• Do you take day guests on the beach? Some of the quietest looking hotels sell beach access to the coach trade. Ask.
• What is the transfer, and is it included? Ninety minutes from the airport at fifty to sixty dollars each way on the north coast, and it is rarely in the rate.

Safari first, then the beach

The trip almost everybody wishes they had booked, and it costs one internal flight rather than a second holiday.

• Nyerere is the natural pairing. A forty five minute flight from Zanzibar, two or three nights, and no long road transfer at either end.
• Do the safari first. Fourteen hours in a game vehicle after a week of doing nothing is the wrong sequence, and everybody who has done it in that order says so.
• Budget $900 to $2,500 a head for the safari half. On top of the beach. The Serengeti is a separate holiday again, at four to six nights and considerably more.
• Ten to twelve days total. Three nights on safari, seven on the coast, and one in Stone Town at the front. See combining a safari with Zanzibar.

Questions people ask