is it expensive to travel in zanzibar this is the question that i was wondering so in this week's
video i'm going to be sharing with you my entire zanzibar cost breakdown in hopes that it helps you
to be a smarter traveler coming up and if you're new here JAMBOOOO i'm Christine with where in the
world is cL they make travel videos every week to help you get off get out and go travel so if
you like to travel consider subscribing let's start with a few tips that you need to know
about getting in the first one is that tanzania does require a visa and for us citizens it does
cost a little bit more and i paid 100 for my visa the second thing to know is around getting in and
getting around depending on where you're going on the island if you're exploring beyond stone town
i would recommend getting a driver and for us we got a larger car because we were a group of four
and so for our car and for our driver we paid 60 per day for the driver and then we also were the
ones responsible for covering things like gas and his meals as a side note these prices are
from when i was traveling there in february 2021 and so i'm using the exchange rate two
dollars from that time but i was paying in tanzanian shillings the entire time
i was on the island and a couple times i paid with my credit card but for the most part i paid cash a
lot of the time while i was on this trip and this video is part of a larger zanzibar video series
so make sure you check the link in the description for more helpful videos all right let's talk about
hotels starting with stone town and i stayed at the doubletree by hilton hotel and paid 115
a night after all the taxes and fees i totally enjoyed this hotel and my friends they stayed
nearby at the dao palace and they paid 72 dollars a night and they totally enjoyed it as well
and one thing to note about these prices when i was there it's high season and the the island
was jam-packed so just know that these are prices during high season hotel prices tend to fluctuate
a lot and i also booked these hotels like days before arriving so there wasn't a ton of inventory
when i booked them which is why these next two hotels i'm not really a fan of
this next spot i stayed at is on the jambiani page east side of the island and i stayed at geo hotel
and i paid just 73 dollars a night which it might seem like a steal but it's not in a great
location it's not exactly close to anywhere you want to be and the other thing is that it's the
type of bathroom where there's no divider between the shower and everything else so
when you take a shower the entire bathroom was wet it was really great value for your money
but i definitely would not stay there again all right let's head north to nangui where i paid
just 91 dollars a night to stay at the opera hotel which seems like a seal because it seems very nice
but when you look behind the curtain the reason why i got this really great rate you know nungui
has a lot of expensive resorts it's because this spot is off of the beach you actually
have to drive to the beach it's not a fun walk and the other thing is that it's a very very
basic hotel i wouldn't recommend it but it was a great steal all right what was the average
price for hotels paid in zanzibar out of all of these after taxes after fees on average i paid 93
dollars a night for hotels and if you're getting some value out of this cheers that like button and
consider subscribing share this with someone who might be traveling to zanzibar and most
importantly if you have hotel recommendations prices other info drop them in the comments
because i'm only sharing my experiences and i would love your tips for my next dance of our trip
alright let's talk about the next thing we're all curious about which is how much does it cost to
eat and drink on this island let's start with some of the more expensive dining experiences
because this is what you really need to plan for in your budget which it's very affordable compared
to other places in the world to eat in zanzibar so let's start with the rock which is definitely an
amazing dining experience and you can pay anywhere from 20 or so for pastas and thirty dollars for
seafood a restaurant that i ate at several times inside the hilton double tree that's in nangwi is
the fisherman restaurant and at this spot plates were around fifteen dollars and grilled items were
twenty five dollars and then if you head to stone town i really loved eating at emerson tea house
definitely an amazing dining experience it's a set menu and it's forty dollars per person for
that set menu so those are some of the examples of the more expensive places to eat i would say on
average everywhere on the island i paid anywhere from eight dollars to fifteen dollars for a plate
of food at an average restaurant i'm not talking about street food so eight to fifteen dollars
for a normal meal and what about drinks for me i love drinking wine i think you know that by now
but on average for wine i paid anywhere from four dollars a glass to eight dollars a glass even at
the nice places like at the bar in the park hyatt in stone town eight dollars for a glass of wine
and a beautiful experience was a total steal so what the heck does that all add up to let's just
call it on average having a normal breakfast and lunch around five to ten dollars a day and then
having a nicer dinner with a couple of drinks at one of these restaurants i talked about on average
per day your food bill will be around 50 or less i guess that price also depends on how much you
drink in a day which by the way if you want to buy me a glass of champagne to thank me for helping
you with my videos i would love for you to do that check the link in the description below to find
out how all right let's talk about some of the activities and how much i paid for the activities
let's start with boating because i love getting out on a boat when we went to nemba island it cost
us well they tried to get us to originally pay 220 dollars to be taken out on a boat to the sandbar
for snorkeling and hanging out and we got that price down after negotiating to 70 dollars for
the entire experience and this was split between four people here's another example of the boating
experience and this one is in stone town we hired a boat driver to take us out to the island they
literally just dropped us off at the island and then they set us up with like an umbrella and a
cooler for our drinks because we brought our own drinks and we basically hung out on the sandbar
all day and then we're driven back and for this experience we paid a total of 43 dollars for three
people here are a couple examples of a few more expensive activities one was scuba diving which
in zanzibar is still very very affordable i went out with east africa diving and with
all of my gear and equipment and even though i was the only diver on the boat which was awesome
i only paid one hundred dollars for two scuba dives and if you're on the east side of the
island in john vianney page and you want to learn to kite surf you can do that with group
lessons over the course of three days and the average price that i was hearing about was 900
for those lessons for three days and a couple of examples of super fun but super
inexpensive activities also on the east side i'd love going to the kuva cave which was just
ten dollars per person to get in or you can find signs on the beach everywhere of who to what's app
to have a bike delivered to your hotel and i love just biking on the beach for just
a 5 bike rental per day i'm so curious tell me in the comments below if the prices i'm talking
about are in line with what you expected or are more or less than what you anticipated for me
i found out i was traveling to zanzibar just a few days before i left so it was all a surprise
to me that story for another day but tell me in the comments below i'm curious what you think
all right let's recap where we're at with prices when it comes to hotels the average price paid
was 93 for hotels when it comes to food assuming you have that nice meal at the end of the day
we're talking around 50 a day for food and lastly activities i know it's all over the place but
on average let's call it 20 a day for an activity so we are looking at 163 a day to travel in
zanzibar not including anything else let's talk about a few other really helpful tips for
traveling around zanzibar when it comes to saving money and costs in general the first one is around
exchanging your money if you have us dollars know that a lot of times on the island you will get a
better exchange rate for larger 50 and 100 dollar bills than you will for the smaller denominations
and one thing to know is that atms are aplenty in stone town not saying that there's no atms on the
rest of the island but they're not as easy to find on the rest of the island so if you have
things like exchanging money or wanting to get money out of atms consider trying to get that done
in stone town before you travel out to other parts of the island another helpful tip is around saving
money on laundry if you need to do laundry on this island consider trying to do it in stone town i'll
link in the description below the place that i was trying to go to where you pay per piece but
it's very very very cheap as compared to anywhere else on the island and pretty much everywhere on
the island you would have to have your hotel do it and you're again paying per piece but it costs
significantly more if you like helpful tips like this you might enjoy my email newsletter
sign up for my travel tribe in the description below so you don't miss a thing and you get more
helpful tips delivered right to you and a tip on tipping so the guidance from the hotel so when i
was eating and drinking at the park hyatt they were the one of the only establishments that
added a five percent mandatory tip and so i didn't see that anywhere else but the tip that i chose to
give because food was very affordable in zanzibar i just kept it at the average 15 to 20 percent
so that's just something to consider and if you've made it this far in the video then i have a secret
video for you um that i i don't know if i'm gonna make it available to everyone on youtube
a lot of people don't understand that i'm just trying to share my experience and in a way
that helps you to plan your own zanzibar trip i try to make the videos i wish i got to see and so
while i don't want to call these scams in zanzibar i will call it things to look out for and tips
for how to get out of them or navigate through these not so positive experiences that i
personally had so that video if you want it check the description below to find more info about it
i'm christine i'm here every week with new videos i hope to see you in the next adventure ciao