The Best Hotels in Tanzania for Every Traveller

Facing a breezy bay from the Msasani peninsula’s low-rise seafront, Slipway’s cheery enclave encompasses shops, restaurants and bars. Around 7km (4mi) from the city centre, this is an upmarket neighbourhood that’s as popular with locals as visitors. The original blue-washed property has an appealing, faintly Art-Deco exterior and characterful rooms with traditional furniture, while a newer wing boasts more upmarket accommodation. Slipway can organise boat cruises, fishing and diving trips for you, along with excursions to Bongoyo Island Marine Reserve.

On Zanzibar’s remote eastern coast, Xanadu is an impeccably luxurious yet discreet beachfront hideaway. With domes, vaulted ceilings, archways and rounded chamber-like rooms, individually designed villas offer a notably stylish retreat. Shady terraces with plunge pools, lush tropical gardens, ethno-chic furniture and 24/7 butlers suggest an aristocratic Swahili estate owned by a spice magnate. Activities from kayaking to spear fishing and spice farm tours will help pierce the bubble.

If rustic simplicity with a bohemian vibe fills your sails, this lodge lives up to its name. Garden hammocks, driftwood furniture and fisherman’s gazebos complement a cluster of thatched conical-roofed cottages with four-poster beds and diaphanous mosquito nets. Framed by an Indian Ocean beach, its simple unpretentious Zanzibari style lends an easygoing atmosphere.

Tucked away on the island’s northwestern tip, beside a superb stretch of blinding-white sand, Gold is a conventional resort-style property veined with pleasing touches of Swahili design. Accommodation generally features muted earthy tones with gold accents; the jungle and beach villas offer private plunge pools or Jacuzzis. The main beach-front restaurant boasts a striking cavernous makuti thatched roof, while the arches and pendant lanterns of the Sultan Bar reference the island’s historical connections with Arabia.

Named after the striking baobab trees that grace its leafy compound, Sandies is an all-inclusive resort on Nungwi Beach, in the northwest of Zanzibar. The accommodation is sleek and unfussy – gleaming white rooms with wooden accents – while traditional makuti thatched roofing lends a pleasing veneer of Swahili style. An amphitheatre hosts evening shows, and the curvy swimming pool resembles the body of an acoustic guitar.

Idyllic oceanfront locations don’t always come with a hefty price tag. Miramont’s simple garden bungalows and rooms have a bohemian-meets-gap-year feel, buoyed by a beachside terrace of rustic loungers moored beneath elegantly leaning palm trees. A generally young and fun clientele lend a cheery rather than polished atmosphere with the laid-back Bob Marley-tinged ambience of a Zanzibari fishermen’s commune without the nets or chores.

At the island’s most northerly point and practically in the shadow of its oldest lighthouse, Aluna is a modest newly renovated property with two pools. Traditional makuti thatched roofs atop simple cottages lend a touch of Swahili style and weekly communal barbecue dinners with live music aim for a friendly family feel. Here on the quieter rim of Nungwi town, the bucolic charm of its leafy surroundings is enhanced by the neighbouring turtle sanctuary occupying a tidal pond.

Perfectly scalloped out of the eastern coastline, Pongwe Bay hosts this resort on its northern reaches. With bougainvillea, frangipani and banana trees in the gardens, the property faintly resembles a Swahilian village, albeit one with a sky-blue pool and modern loungers. Rooms and suites feature sleek whitewashed decor with dark wooden furniture while sandy footpaths help make the resort feel like an organic extension of the fine beach.

Facing but set back slightly from the harbour, this sleek, modern hotel stands in the convenient Kivukoni district, famed for its fish market. Rooms and suites offer sensible, practical decor with floor-to-ceiling windows affording panoramic views. There’s a particularly well-equipped fitness centre and the elevated infinity pool seems to blend into the nearby harbour, interrupted only by the line of palm trees in the front garden.

This palatial resort – with golf carts for guests who don’t want to walk – occupies fetching gently sloping terrain overlooking the powder-perfect sands of northwest Zanzibar. Extensive, well-tended gardens combine with stylish interiors skilfully distilling Swahilian and Arab aesthetics with archways, pillars, lanterns, lattice screens, woodwork and ethnic furnishings. An enormous infinity pool complements better-than-average facilities for watersports and tennis.

European country-house glamour meets East African culture at this remote riverside lodge in the vast Selous Game Reserve – Africa’s largest. The elevated position lends stunning vistas across the tea-coloured Rufiji River often dotted with wallowing hippos and sly crocodiles. Full English breakfasts, sundowners, puddings and cheese – a minor miracle considering its location – tick all the boxes. Beyond the usual game drives, there are guided walks, some tailored to birdwatchers, and compelling riverboat safaris.