Written by RuinMyTrip Editorial from published research and official sources, not from a personal trip. It is not a traveler review and is never counted in the community rating. How we research.
destination · Zanzibar
Zanzibar in 2026: gorgeous beaches, a UNESCO old town, and a growing pile of fees and friction
Review of Zanzibar
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Share your experienceZanzibar had a record year. The archipelago logged 917,167 international arrivals in 2025, up nearly 25 percent from 736,755 in 2024, and European travelers, led by Italy at roughly 14 percent of visitors followed by France and Poland, now dominate the mix. That surge is exactly why the honest version of this trip looks different than it did a few years ago: more fees, more construction, and more scrutiny of who actually benefits from the boom. Start with entry. As of January 2025, Tanzania scrapped visa on arrival entirely. Every visitor now needs an e-visa applied for in advance at visa.immigration.go.tz, a single-entry tourist e-visa runs about $50 for up to 90 days, and US citizens specifically are pushed into the $100 multiple-entry visa even for a one-time trip. Processing typically takes two to five business days, so this is not something to leave for the airport. Once you land, the fees keep stacking. Zanzibar's hotel infrastructure levy, essentially a bed-night tax, jumped from $5 to $10 per person per night as of August 1, 2024, approved by the Zanzibar House of Representatives and charged on every overnight stay (day-trippers are exempt). Then, starting November 1, 2025, a new international flight tax of $45 one-way or $90 round-trip gets folded directly into airline ticket prices for anyone flying in or out, funding passenger-data systems the government says will improve travel security. None of this is disclosed clearly upfront in most vacation-package marketing. The development story underneath the tourism numbers is more uncomfortable. Zanzibar's parliament spent much of 2025 airing land disputes publicly: lawmakers accused government officials of fueling forged titles and multiple-ownership claims, and criticized the government for failing to compensate residents displaced when their homes were demolished for infrastructure projects. In September 2025, fourteen international scientists wrote an open letter urging Zanzibar's government to relocate a planned luxury resort on Pemba island away from an ecologically sensitive reserve, and as of March 2026 construction was reportedly continuing despite the objections. A separate, widely covered dispute saw a British developer accuse Zanzibar authorities of undermining a planned beach resort without due process. None of this means don't go. It means the beachfront resort you're booking sits inside a live, unresolved fight over who controls Zanzibar's coastline. Health-wise, malaria risk is high across all of Tanzania below 1,800 meters, including the entire Zanzibar archipelago, so prophylaxis (atovaquone/proguanil, doxycycline, or mefloquine) is genuinely worth arranging with a doctor before you go, not an optional extra. Yellow fever vaccination is only mandatory if you're arriving from, or transiting more than 12 hours through, a country with yellow fever risk; travelers flying direct from the US or Europe typically don't need it. On safety, the US State Department raised its overall Tanzania travel advisory to Level 3, Reconsider Travel, on October 31, 2025, citing crime, unrest, terrorism concentrated in the Mtwara region on the southern mainland, and targeting of LGBTQ+ travelers by police. Zanzibar itself sits hundreds of kilometers from that flashpoint and is generally described as calmer than the mainland, but the advisory covers the whole country and same-sex sexual conduct remains criminalized, which matters for how openly LGBTQ+ travelers can move.
What was great
Stone Town is a genuine UNESCO World Heritage Site, a dense old quarter of coral-stone buildings and more than a thousand carved wooden doors that eight centuries of Swahili, Arab, Persian, Indian, and European trade actually built, not a themed recreation of one. Spice tours through working plantations that still grow clove, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla, the crops that made 19th-century Zanzibar the world's largest clove producer, run roughly $15 to $40 and are a real agricultural visit rather than a gift-shop stop. The beaches on the east coast and around Nungwi are the reason nearly a million people visited in 2025, and the tourism sector is large enough now that flights, resorts, and dive operators are well developed and easy to book. For travelers who want turquoise water and a walkable historic town in the same trip, few places in East Africa pair the two as directly as Zanzibar does.
What nearly ruined the trip
The fee stack is the honest headline. Between the mandatory $50 to $100 e-visa, the $10-per-person-per-night hotel levy added on top of your room rate since August 2024, and the new $45 to $90 international flight tax layered into airfare from November 2025, a couple can easily add several hundred dollars in government charges to a one-week trip, most of it not obvious from the advertised price. Malaria prophylaxis and, for some itineraries, yellow fever vaccination add planning overhead and cost most beach-vacation marketing glosses over. The bigger issue is what's happening behind the beachfront. Zanzibar's own lawmakers spent 2025 publicly describing a land administration system riddled with forged titles and disputed ownership, with residents displaced for infrastructure projects and, by the government's own lawmakers' account, often left uncompensated. International scientists and at least one foreign developer have separately accused authorities of pushing resort development forward, including on an ecologically sensitive reserve, over documented objections. Book a beach resort here and there's a real chance it sits on land whose ownership history would not survive a close look. Tanzania's mainland is also under a US Level 3 advisory for crime and terrorism risk as of October 2025, and while Zanzibar itself is calmer, that context is part of the same country you're flying into.
Safety
★★★☆☆ MixedValue for money
★★☆☆☆ OverpricedComments
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