The Neela Boutique Hotel Stone Town

Of all the beautiful doors in Stone Town, the one you must be sure to enter is the door to the Neela Boutique Hotel. This amazingly unique and elegantly restored historic hotel in the heart of Stone Town is tucked in a back alley but is so worth the effort to locate. My wife and I recently stayed two nights at the Neela – the stay was perfect from check-in to check-out. The staff, to a person, were some of the most welcoming and professional hospitality personnel we have experienced – I’m not sure they ever stopped smiling, even as they were tending to every detail. They made us feel like we were the only guests in the hotel and that their only goal was our comfort. Our air-conditioned Superior room was beautifully appointed, spacious, and very comfortable. The bed and the pillows were luxurious yet cozy for landing on at the end of both very busy days. At The Views Rooftop Bar & Lounge we enjoyed flavorful, fresh food, amazing views, and a friendly, attentive staff. The View Rooftop served us lunch and dinner. The first floor restaurant, Breadfruit Restaurant & Café, served us a fresh, delicious, and flawlessly prepared breakfast both days. The fish bacon was a tasty surprise! I wish I could give the Neela more than 5 stars; suffice it to say, we checked out wanting very much to stay longer.

I had a terrible accident as soon as my friend and I checked in at the Neela. While the hotel porter was carrying my luggage on the stairs, it slipped from his shoulder and fell on my hand. The luggage being an 18kg piece, the consequences on my hand have been dramatic. I am writing this 1.5 month after the accident. I had to go through emergency surgery, wear a cast for one month and now going through an intensive 2-month physiotherapy, hoping that I will eventually get back partially my hand’s mobility. Since it is the right hand and I am hand written, needless to elaborate on the damages I have been suffering on my daily actions. Everything stopped or changed. While an accident may happen anywhere anytime, I do have a couple of comments on the way it has been handled by the hotel: -It took almost an hour to get a doctor while I was crying my eyes out in pain. The staff were definitely untrained to deal with such emergencies and most of them seemed to be actually trained not to let such incidents distract them from work! -While the manager in duty (Mrs. Khadija) took me to the hospital when the doctor asked for it to do an x-ray and get pain killers and insisted on putting on the house our airport transfer and our 2 meals, she did not seem unfortunately to have any empathy for the great pain I was experiencing. -When we got back home to get treatment (as the local hospital couldn’t do much and we were flying out the following day), the manager sent one single message to follow-up and, when told that I was getting emergency surgery and that my condition was very bad, never replied back. This tells how the manager did not actually care about the consequences of an accident that happened in the hotel she is managing, and all she was worried about was whether I would sue them legally. I chose not to because I did not want the porter to get hurt. However, I do believe that the hotel management owes me a lot as my whole life has turned into a nightmare because of what happened at the Neela. On the hotel itself, while my friend and I both paid almost 400$ for one night, our rooms were completely different in size (hers was twice as big). A room definitely not worth 400$ anyway. Because of the Neela, I would remember Stone Town as a dark spot for a long time ahead…

Easily the best thing about the Neela was my room (1), which was cosy, clean, insect-free (a huge plus after my last stop!), and had good air conditioning and WiFi. The rest of the hotel I would say is just OK - the location is convenient enough, but you walk through some pretty drab alleys to get there and it's not by the sea (unlike the Park Hyatt which feeds directly onto the beach), and there's no pool. The food I had was pretty average, although the staff were very nice. If you're passing through Stone Town for a night I'd say it's a reasonable choice, but I'm not sure if I would choose it for a longer stay.