Smiles Stone Town Hotel in Zanzibar City

If you are a tourist looking for a nice place to stay in Stone Town for a few days, do not book this hotel. It is not like it looks in the pictures, for the price. We paid 150 USD for 2 nights, which could have been used to get a much better hotel closer to the center. I urge you to do more research about Stone Town and where to go before visiting, because I did not.

The hotel itself occupies what was likely a very beautiful building years ago but really needs a renovation. The room provided was clean and was well serviced every day we stayed there, with the beds remade, towels replaced, bathrooms cleaned. The minimum you’d expect from a hotel. The main problem that many will encounter, and one that really irritated myself and my friend, was the bathroom. The bathroom is very small, with a sink, a toilet and a handheld showerhead. There is no shower curtain, if you want to clean yourself after a long day you have to stand in the middle of the bathroom and hose yourself down with water that isn’t even hot. This results in getting everything in the bathroom soaking wet, including the toilet. This makes using the restroom after showering an unpleasant experience.

The location is great if you want easy access to the ferry. Good if you are leaving for the 7 AM ferry because it can be quite hectic. The cons? Very far walk to the nice part of stone town through a very dirty and busy part of the city where you will be constantly harassed, it is noisy nearly 20/24 hours of the day making it very difficult to sleep, and not close to any notable restaurants.

Avoid.

Overall not recommended. We did not have a nice welcome, the bathroom in the ground floor was smelly and did not work. The rooms were very simple and the bathroom had the shower over the toilet which made no sense and it was really smelly. It is located next to the commercial port and it is VERY noisy (we woke up at 5 in the morning due to it) The breakfast is extremely simple. Won’t be coming back for sure !!

I had a reservation for 4 nights but my flight was cancelled so I cancelled the reservation. There was a cancellation policy, 50% charge for later cancellation and no charge at all for earlier cancellation. 50% would have been fine for me but they still charge full price of 4 nights. I contacted them also afterwards but they don't give any money back.