White Sand Luxury Villas & Spa occupies four hectares of tropical garden behind some 200 metres of Paje Beach, on Zanzibar’s southeast coast. Offshore, a coral barrier flattens the Indian Ocean into a lagoon. The lagoon shifts from pale aqua to deep blue as the day turns. Nineteen walled villas stand among baobabs and frangipani, spaced so neighbours stay out of sight.
The lagoon shifts from pale aqua to deep blue as the day turns.
The Niznik family, who built the place, came here to kitesurf. From June to September the Kusi wind blows out of the southeast, across flat, shallow water over a sandy bottom. Lessons and Cabrinha rentals go out from the beach with the on-site club, Zanzibar Kite Paradise, and the lighter, warmer Kaskazi season suits beginners better.
Andre Niznik, a Polish-French technology entrepreneur, came to Zanzibar around 2010, after climbing Kilimanjaro, to build a family holiday house on Paje Beach. The plan grew into a resort, opening in July 2014 with interiors by his wife, Katarzyna Kuzminska, and architecture by Neil Rocher. Their daughter, Natalia Niznik, co-owns it today and works as sales director. The family has kept it privately owned throughout.
Bedroom and living space are often set in separate pavilions
Each villa keeps to its own walled and planted plot. The largest beachfront plots run to some 1,500 square metres. Bedroom and living space are often set in separate pavilions, with a private pool, terrace and garden between them, and indoor and outdoor bathrooms, hammocks and shaded dining pavilions repeat across the categories. Every villa is assigned its own butler.
The barrier reef lies offshore, breaking the Indian Ocean swell before it reaches the sand. Twice a day the lagoon empties across sandflats, tidal pools and seaweed plots. Low water is for walking, out among the plots that the local women farm; high water refills the bay warm, waist-deep and largely waveless, calm enough to swim the length of the White Sand beachfront. The villas face that changing water directly, first line on the sand or set back a row behind it in garden plots.
Dinner is served at Doors to Zanzibar, under a conical roof of makuti thatch hung with a mother-of-pearl chandelier. The menu changes daily and leans on Swahili spice, clove and nutmeg and cinnamon. The fish comes in each morning from Paje’s fishermen, and the herbs, vegetables and fruit from the resort’s own gardens. Lunch moves down to the shaded beach restaurant, grills and salads with sand underfoot, and the cocktails go up to the rooftop Sunset Bar, which keeps a telescope for clear nights.
Twice a day the lagoon empties across sandflats, tidal pools and seaweed plots.
The Senses Spa sits back from the beach in dense garden, its treatment pavilions open to the air, with a waterfall, sauna, infrared steam room and hot tub. The therapies use clove, coconut, nutmeg and seaweed gathered along this coast. Mornings begin with yoga on an outdoor platform, and the rest of the day is there for Swahili lessons, tennis and padel, petanque, cooking classes and open-air film nights. Cruiser bicycles go out to the sandy lanes of Paje and Jambiani, and Jozani Chwaka Bay National Park, home to the Zanzibar red colobus, is a short drive inland.
Power comes partly from a wind turbine and solar arrays, water from the resort’s own desalination plant and wells, bottled in glass and refilled rather than sold in plastic. Most of the staff are Zanzibari, trained on site, and a working carpentry shed on the grounds makes and repairs the doors, frames and furniture, bringing on local craftsmen as it goes. Children of any age are welcome, to a shallow paddling pool, a playground, a games room and babysitting on request. Zanzibar’s international airport is about an hour’s drive away.
accommodation
Nineteen villas and three Cinnamon rooms. The villas run from one-bedroom beachfront plots with a private pool, rooftop terrace and outdoor bath to two-bedroom garden villas and a five-bedroom house with a home cinema, each with a pool or hot tub. The Cinnamon rooms sit in a separate building back from the beach and share the main pools.
activities
Kitesurfing, wing-foiling and e-foiling with the on-site kite club on Paje Beach; kayaking, paddleboarding and dhow sailing inside the lagoon; snorkelling and diving trips to nearby reefs; dolphin-watching and deep-sea fishing. On land: tennis, padel, yoga, cooking classes, bicycle rides to Paje and Jambiani, and excursions to Stone Town and Zanzibar's spice farms.
conservation
The Zanzibar Seaweed Center, a short distance up the coast, employs local women to harvest seaweed and turn it into organic cosmetics, and formulates the soap and shampoo used in the villas. An on-site carpentry workshop trains and employs Zanzibari craftsmen to build and maintain the resort's furniture and fittings, and food is bought daily from Paje's fishermen and local markets.
Get in touch and let’s start the conversation. An initial consultation helps us understand what you’re looking for, whether that’s specific experiences, luxury touches, or marking a special occasion, and from there we’ll guide you through what’s possible so you can decide if we’re the right fit.
01
Zanzibar & Pemba
02
Zanzibar & Pemba
03
Zanzibar & Pemba
04
Zanzibar & Pemba
05
Zanzibar & Pemba
06
Zanzibar & Pemba
07
Zanzibar & Pemba
08
Zanzibar & Pemba
09
Zanzibar & Pemba
Zanzibar's Abeid Amani Karume International Airport is about forty kilometres away, roughly an hour by private road transfer, which the resort arranges. The airport takes flights from Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Doha and Addis Ababa, and light aircraft from the safari airstrips.
Where a trip runs safari then beach, we fly you straight from the Serengeti or Arusha rather than back through the mainland, which saves most of a day.
Yes. Both TravelHealthPro, the UK's official travel health service, and the CDC treat Tanzania below 1,800 metres as malaria country and say explicitly that the islands are included. Antimalarial tablets are recommended for Zanzibar.
We do not give medical advice. We are travel planners rather than doctors, so the choice of tablets, and whether they suit everyone in the party, belongs in a conversation between you and your own doctor or a travel clinic. What we can be useful on is the non-medical part: cover up once the light goes, and carry repellent.
Children are welcome, but what works depends on the villa, because the categories carry their own occupancy rules. Some one-bedroom villas take an additional bed for one adult or two children under fifteen, with a surcharge.
That is fiddly to work out from a website, so tell us the ages and the party size at enquiry and we will match you to the right villa rather than have you discover the limit at the booking stage.
Hot and humid throughout the year, cooled by the trade winds. June to September is fresher and breezier, October to February hotter and stiller, with the long rains around March to May and short rains near November.
Pack light cottons, swimwear, a sun hat and high-factor protection, reef shoes for the coral and a rash top for snorkelling. Paje is a kitesurfing beach, so bring what you need for that if it interests you, and something covering shoulders and knees for Stone Town.
October to February for the calmest seas and the clearest water, which is the pick if snorkelling, diving and swimming matter most. June to September for the trade winds, which is when Paje comes into its own for kitesurfing.
April and May are the long rains, with rough water and poor visibility, and we would generally steer you elsewhere in those months. Tell us whether you want flat water or wind and we will place the dates accordingly.
rated five stars by our clients
our approach
Every journey starts with a conversation. We take the time to understand your vision before we start planning.
Whether by phone or in person, we work with you directly to shape something that is considered, personal, and expertly delivered.
