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Peace here is a must: just a lively reception, a romantic restaurant, the bar on the beach and only 12 cozy rooms in 4 pretty bungalows; everything is in perfect harmony with the natural environment, overlooking our luxuriant tropical garden and directly leaned out on the warm water of the marvelous Indian Ocean. Forget the stressful life and let your internal clock takes its natural cycle back!
Star ratings are intended to indicate the general level of features, amenities, and services to expect. This property is classified according to Giata.
HOTEL STYLE
Quiet
Family Resort
Languages Spoken
English, French, Italian, Swahili
Location
Main Road Jambiani, Jambiani Tanzania
Villa de Coco Resort
4.2 reviews
Getting there
Somewhat walkable
Places to stay are graded on a 0-100 scale. The higher the grade, the easier it is for travellers to find restaurants and things to do within walking distance.
We spent a month on Zanzibar and the Villa de Coco was the best of the 8 locations we stayed at during our trip. Exceptional management by Mauro, who is from Milan, Italy and brings a touch of European class and excellence to the resort. Mauro manages the resort as if it were his own, and the food and menu selections were excellent and the resort staff courteous and responsive.
The resort has a nice swimming pool for the hours when the tide is out, and there are very few peddlers on the beach trying to sell you stuff. Each room is a small bungalow with ocean views and very comfortable and well maintained.
So if you plan to visit Zanzibar, be sure to check out Jambiani and the Villa de Coco Resort. Mauro will greet you at reception with a small glass of juice and show you all the room options.
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Date of stay: September 2021
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Located on one of the best beaches of Jambiani no matter the tide, the place is intimate, offers excellent cocktails, and the bar tenders are all very friendly, a special notice to Josephine's smile :) the rooms are impeccable, beautiful traditional wooden floors, spotless clean, safe, with hot water (and pressure) round the clock. The manager, extremely professionnal, is always here to make sure you have everything you need. From the pool, you can see the beach and its activities, but none can see you.. finally, unbeatable value for money for the spot. Go!
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Date of stay: July 2021
Value
Rooms
Service
Room Tip:Â All the rooms have beautiful views!
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MANUELA CASSANI, Owner at Villa de Coco Resort
Responded 05 Sept 2021
Dear Gaspard, thanks for your lovely review! This kind of feedback make us really proud of the job done to ensure the guests are always fully satisfied. We hope to welcome you again soon in our little paradise:) Cheers! Th Coco team
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
This is the 2nd time my husband and myself have stayed here. This time we booked the 2 story villa, which was spacious, spotless and full of style. If you are looking for 5 star accommodation, this is not the place for you. But if you are looking for true Zanzibar style, spotlessly clean , relaxing, quiet, on a beautiful beach in a stunning setting then this is your place!!
The food was just as delicious as the last time we stayed, we tried other restaurants in the area and found Villa De Coco to still have the best food. Please note we do not eat seafood so cannot judge this. However the pizza, pastas, curries, samosas etc were so good I had the same pasta 4 nights in a row!
The setting is really the loveliest in the area, and the pool is fantastic as many times in the afternoon the tide was low so we couldn't swim.
Now to the staff, you cannot beat seeing the same lovely smiling faces every morning and every night. Always there with a greeting, and a warm friendly welcome. The chefs made a delicious birthday cake for my husband, and the staff all sang Happy Birthday. Lovely to feel like you are part of a family instead of a big hotel chain where you are anonymous.
The only thing I might suggest it to ensure guests have access to fans, if we hadn't borrowed one our first night we would not have been able to sleep since it was so hot and humid.
So many places to walk to, as Jambiani Village is about 30-40 mins away and Paje about the same.
THANK you again Villa De Coco, we look forward to our 3rd trip!!
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Date of stay: March 2020
Location
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MANUELA CASSANI, Proprietario at Villa de Coco Resort
Responded 08 Mar 2021
Dear Craig and Diane, thanks for your lovely review. Last November we renewed our bar and restaurant and we made some small improvements in the room you slept. Your words give us the energy to do our best every day. We really hope to see you soon!
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Really enjoyed the stay, which was enhanced by wonderful staff and care from manager Mauro. Relaxing on beach or by pool is awesome, and is well located for exploring nearby places. Food is good including pizzas I wood fired oven. They really go out of their way to make sure everything is perfect for you
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Date of stay: September 2021Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
The resort was really nice! At the reception, we were welcomed by a drink and then lead to the room which was very nice (two rooms formed a little house), right next to the beach, pool and the restaurant. Palms, not many people (at the time we were there almost no people), hammock, good food, clean beach..plus the surroundings which looked like paradise - what to wish more. Everything clean, very nice staff.. The location is quiet, not for party people I would say. The meals were expensive (as in all hotels around which we checked or tried), but we found a local place to eat (we were used to local food from the mainland). The price for accommodation with breakfast included was reasonable in our opinion. If you are in Zanzibar (Jambiani), we reccommend!
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Date of stay: September 2019
Location
Cleanliness
Service
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from MANUELA CASSANI, Proprietario at Villa de Coco Resort
Responded 08 Mar 2021
Thanks a lot Patrik. Karibu tena (welcome again)
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I'd read many comments about this place before actually going there (all of them in Italian), but none of them turned out to be true. How come??? The rooms would be ok, but you have absolutely no privacy. The walls are thin like a sheet of paper... The "hotel" is run by an Italian couple who have absolutely no idea about tourism nor hospitality. They're only full of fake smiles. Both of them speaking a very poor English. The guy is visibly "done" all day long... In one word, villa de coco (or coca...) was a true DELUSION. Luckily the island is gorgeous and surely full of nice hotels to stay.
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Date of stay: October 2010
Value
Service
Trip type: Travelled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from villadecoco, Proprietario at Villa de Coco Resort
Responded 30 Jul 2011
Thanks for your review. Certainly all the other 83 reviews are false and only yours is the one that deserves an award for honesty and loyalty The majority of the reviews are in Italian simply because 'we work with a major Italian tour operator that sends about 800 clients each year, but we do not understand why this happen because you write that we have no ability to manage a hotel (and your is the 'one truth'). You are free to judge everything regarding our hotel and its services and we accept criticism in order to improve but hide behind a nickname and accuse me of using drugs is unacceptable behavior which makes me sad and angry, we have real name and we are so proud of our work as the 21 people who work hard at this hotel every day, we are not anonymous, we are Paolo and Cristina and even if we do not speak excellent English we know to be fair and honest, qualities that the person who wrote it has not.
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I'm completely agry with a rewiew of Donato70. You can easily catch a depression in this dirty remoted area (specially when you saw other parts of the island). Zanzibar is a beautiful island, magic! But not Villa di Coco (we called it Villa di Caca). We ended not to leave there and spent all our time in a neighbour hotel Hakuna Magiwe (3-4-5 times better then Coco! small with beautiful beach and romantic privat villas with hammaks on each terrasse).
First surprise. Primarily, you can't call it a hotel!!!! Owned by italian family (very badly run by the way), one villa with 6-8 rooms stick to each other with no space to enter the room if your neighbour going out from their room. No privacy, no romantica, not cosy. Good road finishes 30 min before the Villa di Coco, and after that you arrive in a dirty surrounds with depressive views. When we spoke with local people they told us that this is the most chip area of the island with the worst coast. During 30 min of drive by the VERY BAD road you get to the middle of nowhere with nothing arround and datcha style villa.
Second surprise. The room is BASIC. Very basic. If you go to Villa di Coco be prepered to leave with all hosts of the hotel like one big family as you will hear LITERALLY EVERYTHING (who and when made sex/ pipi/caca), the insonorisation isn't existant as a villa is made of strow. You can not open the window because it goes directly on a your neighbour's door, so you can say them "hello" while you're making love with your boyfriend.
Third surprise. It's on the beach - yes.... but what kind of beach! Always with a low cast (water goes 1km away and leaves dirty silt and algues mixed with Sea hedgehogs (ursins). The most depressive view of the island (as we understood after discovering other places with beautiful beaches where the cast is not as sensitive).
Don't go there. Or just be prepared. If you have to go there - try to spend your time at Hakuna Majiwe hotel's beach (3 km left by the beach side) - it's simple romantic and gorgeouse beach, nothing to do with depressive views of Villa di Coco) and restaurant, rent a moto and explore iother places on a island, Stone Town (which is quite exotic with beautiful beaches).
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Date of stay: November 2009
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Travelled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We booked our New Year holiday for our family at Villa De Coco months ago. We were invoiced, paid in full, booked our flights around the accommodation booking and paid for them in full - and now they have sold our rooms to some Italian tour opertaor who needed beds for some charter flight he had booked. So my advice is not to ever ever book with Villa De Coco because you won't actually ever get to stay there!
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Date of stay: November 2007
Value
Trip type: Travelled with family
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
We stayed at Villa de Coco for 4 nights in late June 2014. From the first moment we arrived we were warmly greeted and given an orientation by Faustin. Not only was Faustin wonderful, the rest of the staff was as well, including Waziri who took our food orders and was very helpful with our personal requests.
On our first night, some of the staff took us to a nearby party where we had a great time. Faustin was our guide for the two tours that we took part in - the Sandbank Tour as well as the Swimming with the Dolphins Tour. He patiently answered any questions we had and anything that we wanted or needed, his response was always "anything is possible!" He even held my hand and comforted me when I was nervous going into the ocean for the swimming with dolphins tour. We dubbed him our "Fairy Godfather" during the trip because anything we wanted to do, however long we wanted to stay, detours we wanted to take, photographs we wanted to take - he was always ready, willing and able to do so with a smile. It was a pleasure having him with us on our tours and we felt very comfortable with him, and he also gave us as much space as we needed.
One issue we had with the tours was that we thought they were a little overpriced and also we lost a bit of money with the conversion from Euros to USD.
The food was excellent as well, including the soups (pumpkin and black pepper and ginger and potato were divine) although, we noticed some minor issues if we needed to make changes to our order. For example, we ordered a spanish omelette with cheese… yet we were presented with a cheese omelete only. Chocolate cake was marble pound cake, no frosting, when I was expecting cocoa chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, but these were small things.
We highly recommend their seafood such as the mixed seafood platter and the tuna sashimi. The fruits were the sweetest and freshest we'd had in ages. Drinks were well prepared and also had a nice garnish. Prices were all reasonable. We feel the staff really went out of their way to make sure we had an enjoyable stay, asking us frequently if everything was ok and whether they could get us anything else.
We did find that our driver spoke little English so at times it was hard to communicate. We were disappointed that when he finally dropped us off to depart at the ferry, he left without so much as a goodbye even though we were quite friendly with him throughout and provided him a nice tip. Overall, we would highly recommend this resort. It's not super fancy, with more of a rustic feel but everything was clean and fresh and the service was impeccable. The bathrooms need a little work though. It had an intimate feel as there were not many people staying there at the same time which we appreciated. If you are looking for a gem in Zanzibar, this is it!
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Date of stay: June 2014
Value
Rooms
Service
Trip type: Travelled with friends
Room Tip:Â Ask if they are renovating the bathrooms and get a room with a new one!
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
I was met at the airport and driven to Jambiani about 1 hour away. On arrival I was greeted by Manuela, the owner, who was extremely pleasant but apologised profusely due to my room not being ready because of flight complications for the previous people. So she had arranged for me to stay right next door at the next lodge for the 1st night. No problems. I ate at Villa de Coco every day and enjoyed the quality of food, but felt there could have been more African influence. Tours were available and conducted by a very friendly, humorous and informative guide who speaks English and Italian as well as Swahili. The bed was a little bit lumpy, but not uncomfortable, and the rooms all overlooked the garden and the beach. Manuela was always checking on the guests, ensuring that everything was fine - an excellent hostess. Thank you!
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Date of stay: January 2014
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Travelled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Prices are provided by our partners, and reflect average nightly room rates, including taxes and fees that are fixed, known to our partners, and due at time of booking. Please see our partners for more details.
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