Why a glossary is a money page
Most glossaries define words nobody was confused about. This one defines the words that change what you pay — the ones where the everyday meaning and the industry meaning are different, and the gap between them is where money goes missing.
No figures are restated here. Every definition points at the page that carries the number with its source and date, because a price copied into two places starts drifting the day after you write it. What this page gives you is the basis — what the number is a number of.
Money and booking
All-inclusive. The most systematically misleading term in the category. It is not a standard, it is a marketing word, and each property decides what it covers. The things it commonly excludes: imported spirits, some restaurants on the same property, excursions, spa, motorised watersports, airport transfers, and the mandatory government-levied costs of entering Zanzibar. Treat “all-inclusive” as the beginning of a question — inclusive of what, exactly, in writing — rather than an answer.
Per person vs per vehicle. The single most misread basis in Zanzibar, and it is worth real money. A private airport transfer is priced per vehicle — the quoted rate is for the car, not for each passenger in it. Four people arriving together pay one rate, not four. Some operators and many aggregators present the same number in a way that reads per person. Always ask which it is before you compare two quotes. See airport transfers.
“From” price. A floor, not a price. It means at least one combination of dates, party size and room type sells at that figure — usually the lowest season, the smallest room, the largest group discount. It carries no promise that your dates exist at that number. Where we quote a “from” price we say so on the same line, because a “from” price presented as a price is a quote you cannot hold anyone to.
Rate parity. An agreement in which a seller promises not to undercut its distributors. We hold none, which is why we will never tell you we are the cheapest — and why, if you find something cheaper direct, you should book it direct and tell us our page is stale. See how we price.
Commission. What a property or operator pays a booking channel out of its own margin when a booking comes through that channel. It does not add to your price, and it is not a recommendation: paying commission buys distribution, not endorsement. Any page here that recommends something you can pay for says what we earn on it.
Mandatory travel insurance. Zanzibar requires inbound visitors to hold travel insurance from a single authorised provider, bought separately from any policy you already own — so it is a real, unavoidable line in your trip budget rather than an optional extra, and it is not covered by “all-inclusive”. The tariff is not published until you begin an application, so we do not state a figure; see open questions for exactly what we could and could not confirm.
TCS. Tax Collected at Source — an Indian tax applied when residents of India buy certain overseas tour packages and remittances. It is collected at the point of purchase and is generally creditable against your Indian tax liability rather than being a pure cost, but the rate is tiered and depends on how the booking is structured. We publish no rate: this is chartered-accountant territory, not search-result territory.
Seasons, weather and the sea
Masika. The long rains, broadly March to May. Broadly is the operative word — these are patterns, not dates.
Vuli. The short rains, broadly October to December.
Kaskazi. The northeast monsoon, broadly November or mid-December to March. Warmer, lighter winds.
Kusi. The southeast monsoon, broadly April or June to October. Cooler, stronger, and the reason the kite season runs when it does.
Note that rain and wind run on two different cycles. This is why “the dry season” and “the good season” are not the same question, and why a single best month does not exist.
Bimodal rainfall. Two rainy seasons a year rather than one. Zanzibar has Masika and Vuli, which is why the year does not split neatly into “wet” and “dry”.
Climate normal. A thirty-year average used as the reference for what is typical — not a forecast, and not what your week will do. Two normals computed over different thirty-year windows will differ from each other, and that difference is usually a trend, not an error.
Spring tide and neap tide. Nothing to do with the season. Spring tides are the largest range between high and low, around full and new moon; neap tides are the smallest, around the half moons. Both happen roughly twice a month. On Zanzibar’s east and southeast coasts the spring range is large enough to change what the beach is between morning and afternoon.
Semi-diurnal. Two high tides and two low tides a day, which is Zanzibar’s pattern. It means a beach that is unswimmable when you arrive is usually swimmable again later the same day — the thing to plan around is the timing, not the beach.
Datum. The reference level a tide table measures from. It matters because a tide height is meaningless without one, and most commercial tide tables for Zanzibar do not state theirs. There is no free official hydrographic tide table for Zanzibar — see open questions.
Reef flat. The shallow shelf between the beach and the reef edge, exposed at low tide on the east and southeast coasts. Walking out on it is the local rhythm, not a failure of the beach — but it does mean swimming is tide-dependent, and it is the thing most first-time visitors are least prepared for. See Paje.
Getting around
Transfer. A pre-booked private car for a fixed route at a fixed price, usually airport to hotel. Priced per vehicle. Distinct from a taxi, which you hail and negotiate.
Shared shuttle. A vehicle carrying unrelated parties, priced per seat. Cheaper in principle and slower in practice. We publish no shared-shuttle rate because no operator publishes one as a fixed rate card entry.
Dala-dala. The shared minibus and converted-truck network that is Zanzibar’s public transport. Cheap, slow, and routed around local needs rather than tourist ones.
Ride-hailing. App-based car booking. Coverage in Zanzibar is genuinely uncertain rather than simply present or absent — one major app lists Zanzibar on its own site and another does not list Tanzania at all, and neither fact tells you whether you will get a car at the airport at midnight. Do not plan an arrival around it.
Diving and kitesurfing
Discover Scuba Diving (DSD). A single-day introduction under direct instructor supervision. Not a certification, and not a step you have to take before a course. Note that what a DSD includes varies a lot between centres — some are a pool session plus two open-water dives, some are considerably shorter — so the price spread between centres is often about content, not markup. See the dive price index.
PADI Open Water Diver. The entry-level certification that lets you dive independently to a stated depth limit. It runs over several days and combines theory, confined-water practice and open-water dives.
Advanced Open Water. The next certification up. “Advanced” is the course’s name, not a description of you — it is normally taken directly after Open Water.
Private vs shared tuition. The distinction that explains most of the price range in kitesurfing, and the one most often left out of a quote. A private lesson is one instructor to one student. A shared or group lesson divides an instructor between two or more students and is quoted per person. Two quotes for “a 6-hour beginner course” can differ by a factor of two or three purely on this. Always ask the ratio. See the kite price index.
Property, land and investment
These are legal terms with specific meanings under named Zanzibari instruments. They are defined here so you can read a developer’s brochure critically — not so you can skip a lawyer.
Public land. Under the Land Tenure Act 1992, effectively all natural land in Zanzibar is public land, vested in the President and held for the common benefit of the people of Zanzibar. There is no freehold. Every arrangement below sits on top of that fact.
Right of occupancy. The perpetual interest a Zanzibari may hold in land. Not available to non-Zanzibaris.
Lease of public land. The route available to any person, Zanzibari or not. Each term is capped by the 1992 Act, leases may be renewed, and the Act says a lease of public land shall not be sold, assigned, sub-leased or sub-divided — though it is inheritable. How that restriction interacts with a developer’s resale promise is an open question and a question for counsel.
Unit title (strata title). Ownership of an individual unit within a building, under the Zanzibar Condominium Act 2010. The Act is silent on nationality — it does not say foreigners may buy, and it does not say they may not. “The Condominium Act lets foreigners buy” is therefore an inference, not a quotation. The Act does give a buyer from a proprietor or developer a rescission right within ten working days of signing, which almost nobody markets and everyone buying off-plan should know about.
ZIPA. The Zanzibar Investment Promotion Authority. It issues investment certificates and regulates investment; it does not register companies.
BPRA. The Business and Property Registration Agency — the body that actually registers companies in Zanzibar, under the Companies Act. If someone tells you ZIPA will register your company, they have the map wrong.
Certificate of Investment. ZIPA’s approval of a project, granted where the investment meets a capital threshold set in the Act’s Second Schedule. The thresholds differ by investor category and by sector. It gates incentives — it is not itself permission to buy property, and the figures widely quoted online do not all come from the current Act. See can foreigners buy property in Zanzibar.
Approved Investment. A project holding a Certificate of Investment. The status carries obligations as well as benefits: transferring or disposing of an Approved Investment, or shares in it, requires written approval from the Authority beforehand.
Strategic Investment. A separate, much higher tier of status with its own thresholds — including routes based on job creation rather than capital alone, which almost no agency content mentions. It unlocks a different and more generous schedule of incentives than an ordinary certificate.
Special Economic Zone (SEZ). An area designated by the President by notice in the Gazette. Read that carefully before relying on it: the designating notice also defines the zone’s incentives and its regulators — which may be private rather than public. ZIPA has exclusive regulatory jurisdiction over zones except where a notice says otherwise. So “it’s in an SEZ, so ZIPA regulates it” is a reasonable default and not a guarantee.
Tax holiday. A period of exemption from corporate tax. The length depends entirely on which track you are on, and marketing routinely quotes the most generous one available to anybody. An ordinary approved investor outside a zone, a strategic investor, and a zone developer are three different regimes with three different answers — and at least one of them is granted only on application rather than automatically.
About this page. We are not investment advisers, lawyers or tax professionals, and nothing here is advice to invest. We publish what official sources say, with the source and the date we read it. Rules change and individual situations differ: verify anything that matters with ZIPA, your own lawyer and your own accountant before money moves.
How we use four words about ourselves
Last verified. The date a human last confirmed the facts on a page at their source. Never “last updated” — updating wording is not checking a number, and a site that shows you the second while implying the first is telling you something untrue about how fresh it is.
Provenance. The source, the method and the date, written into the sentence rather than hidden in a footnote. Method is one of four things: site (the operator’s own published page), phone, in-person, or rate-sheet.
Correction. A change to a figure, a rule or a factual claim — logged publicly and permanently at corrections, including the errors we caught before publishing. Rewording is not a correction and does not appear there.
Open question. Something we looked for and could not confirm. We publish the gap rather than filling it with a plausible number; the register is at open questions.
Missing a term? If a word cost you money in Zanzibar and it is not here, tell us — the WhatsApp button on any page reaches a human — and it goes in.