Meliá Zanzibar

The resort is laid out across a wide beachfront estate with a long list of room and villa categories, from garden rooms up to private pool villas and the adults only Level rooms. The category you book decides which pools, lounges and dining rooms are open to you.

Year round. The sea is warm in every month and the resort keeps its full programme of dining, watersports and kids club through the quieter weeks.

Fly into Zanzibar, which is about an hour from Kilimanjaro or Arusha and reachable directly from several international hubs, then take a road transfer of roughly one hour north to Kiwengwa on the east coast.

Yes. There is a kids club, several pools including shallow water for younger children, and family rooms and villas that keep everyone under one roof. The adults only Level pool and lounge give couples a quiet corner at the same time.

All inclusive board with meals daily, soft drinks, 15% VAT and 5% service charge, the pools including the adults only pool, the kids club and the dive and watersports centre. The Zanzibar infrastructure tax of 5 USD per person per night is paid to the hotel on departure, the government inbound travel insurance of 44 USD per person is paid online before arrival, and festive gala dinners, spa treatments and premium room supplements are charged separately.

June to October and December to February are the driest and busiest months. March to May and November carry more rain but the resort stays open and the beach is quieter.

Free WiFi covers the rooms and the public areas and carries video calls comfortably for most of the day. Mobile data works well across the east coast on the main networks. Local SIM cards are sold at the airport and in Kiwengwa village.

Mains power runs the resort with generator backup, so air conditioning and charging carry on through any interruption to the island supply. Sockets are the British style three pin type, so bring an adapter if your plugs are two pin. Tap water is not for drinking and bottled water is supplied in the rooms and at every restaurant.

The resort can call a doctor to the room and there is a clinic within a short drive of Kiwengwa. Stone Town, about an hour away, has the main hospitals on the island, and serious cases are flown to the mainland. We ask every guest to travel with insurance that covers medical evacuation, which is separate from the government inbound travel insurance everyone pays online before arrival.

Kiwengwa sits on the east coast, which has a big tidal range, so sea swimming is at its best around high tide and the pools cover the hours when the water pulls back over the reef flat. The long rains fall from late March into May and the short rains come in November, usually as heavy showers that pass rather than all day weather. Those weeks are the calmest of the year on this stretch of beach.