Hotel Riu Jambo Review Nungwi, Zanzibar

1. Check in

The RIU Hotel is well known as an all-inclusive hotel.
Water sports such as paddleboarding and kayaking are also available for free, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks.
Room check-in is at 3 o'clock (if you want to enter the hotel room early, you can pay $50), but you can enter the hotel early as well. So we checked in at around 11 a.m., we checked in and dropped off our luggage, received bracelets, swam, drank in the bar, ate snacks, and used all the other facilities.

At the time of check-in, the staff said that it is not breakfast time but lunch time, so it seems that you can check-in early in the morning.

2. Facilities

Swimming pool, bar, restaurant, beach, special restaurant
First of all, there are five swimming pools, the depth of the water is not deep at 120 centimeters.
Most of them swim in the sea, so there are few people in the pool.

There are bars everywhere, so you can order cocktail, beer, wine, spirit, coffee, and drinks

At the snack bar Rafiki, you can eat pizza, fries, chicken, hamburger, and hot dogs in a buffet style with slightly different menu configurations from time to time.
It doesn't taste very good and tastes like a rest area food court, but it's not that bad.

The most hip place in Hotel Rio Jambo, the pool bar!
You can drink while swimming and the chair is in the water, so I liked this place the most.

If you want to see further details about Riu Jambo hotel in Nungwi Zanzibar
you can check out my YouTube video
https://youtu.be/5m-oAoXsqXM

There are four restaurants, the main restaurant and the special restaurants.
The main restaurant is buffet-style, and you can go and eat at any time during the operating hours, but for the special restaurants you have to make reservations through the RIU Hotel app.
The problem here is that special restaurant reservations open 48 hours before and you can only make a reservation through the app after check in, and if you stay a day like us the restaurants are either fully booked or the booking system has already been closed for that day, and even if you ask the reception, they will tell you to make a reservation through the app.

So for a one-night stay (I think maybe even two nights?) it's practically impossible to book a table at the special restaurant. We knew about this through Google review, and we went with the mindset that it's good to use a special restaurant and it's okay not to use it, so there were no complaints, but quite a few guests protested this
It is said that there is no private beach in Zanzibar.
So it's a beach in the hotel, but there are many other people outside and there are many miscellaneous merchants (but if they approach the guests, the security stops them)

On the beach, you can play water sports such as kayaking, paddleboarding and paddle boating, and in the swimming pool or inner facilities, various games such as yoga, aerobics, beach volleyball, and bingo games are held every hour, so it is not boring.

July is winter in Zanzibar
In most East African - South African countries, as opposed to us, June-July is winter, so it is about autumn weather in Korea.
Even in winter, the temperature in Zanzibar does not drop so much, so it is in the range of 22-28 degrees, so it is not too much to swim and play.
But it always rains once a day. At the end of July, when we went there, there were always light showers between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m

3. Room

We used a partial ocean view room.
It was a room with a basic bed, sofa, TV, toilet (shower O, bathtub X), and balcony, and the air conditioner was central, so we couldn't control it and it wasn't hot because we had a ceiling fan.

What surprised me was that the mini bar drink in the room refrigerator was 4 bottles of water, 4 bottles of Fanta, 4 bottles of coke, 4 bottles of Sprite, and they were all free and refilled after 2 days
Since it was newly built, the facilities were really good and clean.

4. Price

Originally, I tried to make a reservation several times on the Rio app, but I kept getting errors, so I made a reservation through Agoda
The price at the time of reservation was 297, but when checking in, each person had to pay $1 in cash in the name of a tourist tax.

5. Others

Interestingly enough, the airport has the best exchange rate to exchange money in Zanzibar. Or Stonetown Currency Exchange!
Ironically, the Rio Hotel had the best exchange rate in Nungwi. Nungwi General Currency Exchange Rate (2220~2270) Rio Hotel (2290) As of July 2022

I booked the room and sent an email because I was curious about something, but they didn't reply they only read it. I sent it twice, but I got ignored both times

If you want to see further more details about Riu Jambo hotel in Nungwi Zanzibar
you can check my YouTube video
https://youtu.be/5m-oAoXsqXM