Cristal Resort

It was an amazing family trip with beautiful scenery

I wholeheartedly recommend the Cristal Resort in Zanzibar for an enchanting escape. Nestled amid stunning surroundings, this resort offers a unique blend of elegance and comfort. The attention to detail in the design, coupled with personalized service, creates a truly luxurious experience. The Cristal Resort's commitment to showcasing local culture and flavors is evident in its exceptional dining options

Great 👍 "Exceptional stay! Impeccable service, stylish ambiance, and attention to detail. The staff went above and beyond, creating a memorable experience. A perfect blend of luxury and comfort. Highly recommend for an unforgettable getaway."

One of the most beautiful beaches in Zanzibar. White sand between coconut trees and amazing tourquize colors of the Indian Ocean. Very good Asiatic menue, and most importantly lovely welcoming team. Rooms are ok good clean no luxury but for such level of stars and price it's very ok. breakfast is nice and tasty. lovely bar on the beach. on Thursday they have great beach show and party call Pamoja Festival and guests of the hotel has free entry. Was an amazing event with local and international taste. I definitely will return Cristal hotel again

Let’s start with the location which is amazing, the best in Paje in my opinion. Apart from this, this resort needs a lot of work . The rooms where very basic - stayed in an Eco bungalow which had no air conditioning or … windows, only nets. Note that the selection of our room was the travel agency’s mistake, we did not know these details. Luckily in July there is a cool breeze in the evening but good luck in the morning with all the noise. The bathroom was in a very bad condition, you could actually lift the sink from its place, the shower was kind of gross, no curtain, stained towels etc. The breakfast was very basic. My friend’s flip flops were stolen and saw one of the cleaning staff wearing them. My friend was hospitalized and had her key at the hospital. Her roommate was not allowed in because the key was not supposed to have left the property. Somebody had to go to the hospital to fetch the key. A general lack of focus in the service, a lot of people going around with not much purpose when essentials are missing. The resort has great potential because of its location - delightful grounds full of Colombo monkeys and birds, stunning beach but unfortunately these are not enough.

At so nice location and nature it could be a good resort, but there seems to be something wrong with management and staff - many of them are unhappy and does not know the standards of service, it seems like this job is suffering them. And this very strange comparing to other hotels in Zanzibar. We were travelling as a group of 10 friends, so on arrival to this hotel the check in was very complicated like no where els. The manager was hard to catch up with the situation, the check in process was very lomg and chaotic. The ECO bungalows are really economic and very old. The terrace doors doesnt close or you can open and close them without a key even its locked so thats good you don't need to care the key, but its not very nice when you have hide your wallet some where because there is no safe box in the room. The maids changed the towels only once in 4 days and never refilled the shover gel or shampoo. Overall, the price does not match the quality of euipment and service. And finally one more thing - the description states that hotel has a tennis court, so we believed and brought our rackets, but instead of a tennis court we found an old crumbling concrete court, which did not even have a net - I attach a photo.

If you want to have a peaceful and relaxing vacation, avoid this hotel at all costs. I stayed there in January 2023 with family and friends. We had already stayed at the Cristal Resort Hotel twice before and we decided to go back again because of the nice location and what used to be ’friendly’ staff. On our 5th night, before we went to bed I checked the door and all of the windows of our ECO bungalow to be sure they were completely locked and secure. In the morning, we woke up to discover that we had been robbed while my parents and I were asleep. The window from the bathroom was wide open and our phones, money (thousands) and 2 bags were gone. We immediately informed the hotel management about this but their only concern was why we had not put our money in the safe box. The answer is very simple- we usually use the safe box when we are out of the room, not while we were asleep. Beyond the fact that someone was in our room while we were asleep, imagine how worse things could have been had we woken up while the thief/thieves were still in the room. The hotel has a huge security problem and they know it very well. In order to open a closed sliding window they must have had a premeditated plan or system to be able to open it successfully from the outside... and not to have any security guards in that area at night is just outrageous. In hindsight I am pretty sure we were being observed. It had all been planned very well and they knew everything in order to succeed - who had the money of the group, where we were sleeping, everything. In the morning, we called the police and after they finally came, out of nowhere, one of the hotel staff called us to show us that they had found our backpacks without any money in them of course. We found our phones inside one of the backpacks without our SIM cards in them and after we switched them on we saw on the Steps App that our things had been stolen at 3 am in the morning and that the thief/thieves only took just 78 steps and stopped right near the fence of the hotel. The police was trying to play things down by saying that we were so lucky we got our phones back. A few hours later, I received a message from the hotel manager saying precisely this: --- I spoke with our broker and I checked our insurance. It covers things like cameras, phones and laptops but not money, because the issue of money is very complex. --- This is another reason that led us to believe that the hotel staff was involved. What an unbelievable coincidence! We only retrieved the things that were not covered by their insurance- our phones. On top of that, they also had the appalling audacity to say that we needed to wait for the police investigation as they needed to find out whether this had happened for real or not, because according to them, nothing actually proved that somebody had robbed us and that we could have orchestrated the whole thing ourselves...Great! They were also putting pressure on us to stop this scandal because

The beach is fine but full of kite surfers which makes it dangerous to bath and play in the water. UNprofessional staffs make it worse with the noisy loud staffs chatting amongst themselves in the beach bar competing with loud music (which I wonder why we need loud music in the beach). The staff gave us WRONG room as they gave us less beds than requested until we protested. Come and waste your time and money here in this beautiful turquoise beach. FUNtastic!

Wonderful beach plot and beautifully planned common hotel areas. 2 pools and lots of semi shaded areas during the palm trees for the kids to play. Nice beach bar and food / drinks were decently priced and yummy. Staff very friendly. Check-in / check-out procedure was time consuming though. We however were a larger group travelling together, and restaurant bills had been mixed up despite asking for them to be billed each room. Rooms were OK, clean and functional. In the bathroom there was no shower curtains though, hence everything easily got wet. Also no door to the bathroom, only a curtain as separation. AC well functioning at night, but daytime only weak effect and the hotel claimed this was due to limited electricity supply on the island. Of our four rooms there was only one that had a ceiling fan, made a big difference! (rooms in the apartment block at the far end of the hotel) Average rating as I would have preferred a slightly higher standard of the rooms. At the same time, we made our reservation looking for a reasonably priced option over the holidays. I'd still say we got good value for money compared to many other places in peak season. But don't expect luxury. Paje has a nice vibe to it! Lots of kite surfers in the water though, a bit stressful at peak times when taking the kids out to swim. Many restaurant options for lunches and dinners that you can walk to even at night which was lovely.