Boutique Hotel Matlai
Awards, Ratings and Press
This page collects every review score and every award Boutique Hotel Matlai has actually received, in one place, year by year. Every score links to the profile it came from and carries the month we checked it. Every award is listed only because we hold the issuer's own notice for it. We say plainly where the record stops, rather than let a claim imply more than we know.
Quick answer
What have guests and TripAdvisor said about Matlai?
Boutique Hotel Matlai is rated 4.9/5 from 378 reviews on TripAdvisor, 9.7 on Booking.com, 10 on Expedia and 4.8 on Google. TripAdvisor gave it a Travellers' Choice award nine times: 2014, 2015 and every year from 2017 to 2023, with Best of the Best in 2022. Booking.com gave it a Traveller Review Award in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2026. Every award comes from guest reviews; none was paid for.
Our guest scores since 2012
“Since we opened in 2012, our Booking.com guest score has always been between 9.7 and 10.0, and the same for Expedia.”
— Tim Hennig, General Manager, 4 October 2026
That is the General Manager's own account of the hotel's whole history. The platforms show today's number, not the history, so the table above gives what each one shows now, with the month we checked it.
Why this list is short
Matlai is a very small hotel: six rooms in two villas. A hotel our size collects fewer awards than a big resort, and we are fine with that. Many of the awards you see on hotel websites are entered, and paid for, by large hotels that have a marketing team to do it.
Every award on this page comes from guest reviews. We did not pay for any of them and we did not enter any of them. TripAdvisor and Booking.com read what guests wrote and sent us the news. That is also why you will see gaps: we show a year only when we hold the notice for it.
Awards, year by year
Newest first. A row appears only if we hold the issuer's own notice for that award.
| Year | Issuer | Award | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Booking.com | Traveller Review Award | – |
| 2024 | Booking.com | Traveller Review Award | – |
| 2023 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | TripAdvisor put this in the top 10% of hotels worldwide. |
| 2022 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice Best of the Best | Category “Small – Africa”. TripAdvisor put this in the top 1% of hotels worldwide. |
| 2022 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | – |
| 2022 | Booking.com | Traveller Review Award | – |
| 2021 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | TripAdvisor put this in the top 10% of hotels worldwide. |
| 2021 | Booking.com | Traveller Review Award | – |
| 2020 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | TripAdvisor put this in the top 10% of hotels worldwide. |
| 2020 | Booking.com | Traveller Review Award | – |
| 2019 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | – |
| 2018 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | – |
| 2017 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | TripAdvisor put this in the top 1% of hotels worldwide. |
| 2017 | TripAdvisor | Certificate of Excellence | – |
| 2016 | TripAdvisor | Certificate of Excellence | – |
| 2015 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | – |
| 2015 | TripAdvisor | Certificate of Excellence | – |
| 2014 | TripAdvisor | Travellers' Choice | – |
| 2014 | TripAdvisor | Certificate of Excellence | – |
TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice
TripAdvisor gave Matlai a Travellers' Choice award nine times: 2014, 2015 and every year from 2017 to 2023. TripAdvisor's notice for 2017 puts the hotel in the top 1% of hotels worldwide, and its notices for 2020, 2021 and 2023 put it in the top 10%. The notices for the other years name no tier, so we name none either.
In 2022 Matlai also received Travellers' Choice Best of the Best, in the category Small – Africa. TripAdvisor calls it its highest award and told us it puts the hotel in the top 1% of hotels worldwide. We have not received a Travellers' Choice notice since the one covering 2023, and we will not imply a newer award until TripAdvisor sends one. If that changes, this is the page where we will update it, with the date.
TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence
Alongside Travellers' Choice, Matlai held TripAdvisor's Certificate of Excellence in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. It is an older TripAdvisor award, also built on guest reviews.
Booking.com Traveller Review Award
Booking.com gave Matlai its Traveller Review Award in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2026. The award is built on the reviews guests leave on Booking.com, and we did not apply for it. We list only the years we hold Booking.com's own notice for.
Guest review scores
TripAdvisor rates Matlai 4.9 out of 5 from 378+ reviews, checked in October 2026. That listing is the easiest of the four to verify yourself: the link above opens the exact page we read. On the same profile, TripAdvisor also showed Matlai ranked #1 of 8 hotels in Pingwe when we checked in August 2026 — a ranking like that moves as other hotels' own scores change, so treat it as a snapshot from that date, not a standing claim.
Booking.com scores the hotel 9.7 out of 10, its own “Exceptional” band, from 53 guest reviews, checked in October 2026. Expedia's score is 10 out of 10, also rated “Exceptional”, from 47 reviews, checked the same month. Google Maps shows 4.8 out of 5 from 225 Google reviews, also checked in October 2026.
All four numbers move. Guests leave new reviews every week, and a score that was accurate on the day we checked it can be a fraction different by the time you read this page — that is normal, and it is why every figure above carries the month it was checked rather than being written as if it were permanent. For the current number rather than our snapshot, follow the link on each score.
Press
The one press mention we can link to is a TravelAwaits list, “8 Luxurious Resorts You'll Want To Experience On Zanzibar”, by Sarah Kingdom, published on 30 March 2022. Matlai is number 7 on it. One correction: the article puts us on the north-east coast. We are on the south-east coast of Zanzibar.
We list press only with a link we have opened and checked, and nothing else qualifies yet. Journalists researching Zanzibar or Michamvi can write to [email protected].
How this appears in the site's own data
Every award in the table is also recorded in this website's own structured data, in the Hotel entry of our schema.org markup, each with its year. That is the same machine-readable format search engines and AI agents read on every page of this site, not only this one. If an AI assistant answers a question about Matlai's awards, this is very likely where it read the answer, alongside this page's own prose.
We deliberately do not publish an aggregate review rating inside that structured data. A business rating self-published on its own website can read as self-serving to a search engine, so our review scores live only on the actual platforms — TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Expedia and Google, each linked above — and in the prose on this page, never inside our own markup pretending to be independent verification.
What this page does not claim
- No star rating. Matlai has no official star classification.
- No eco-certification. We have not applied for one and we do not hold one.
- No paid awards. We have not paid for or entered any award, and we never list one that hotels pay to enter.
- No standing ranking. A ranking such as “#1 of 8 hotels in Pingwe” was a snapshot from one day in August 2026, so we date it.
This is not a curated highlight reel. We have not picked flattering reviews and left out the rest: the scores above are each platform's own published aggregate, not an average we calculated ourselves. This page exists so a search engine, an AI agent or a person doing their own research has one clean place to find the real numbers, rather than piecing them together from marketing copy scattered across the site.
How we keep this page honest
We check these four numbers against the live platform pages whenever the site goes through a content pass, rather than typing them from memory; the month shown is when we last looked.
If you find a figure here that has drifted from what a platform shows today, tell us — write to [email protected] or use the contact page — and we will correct it. The same standard applies everywhere on this site: every guide carries a "last verified" date because someone actually verified it, and this page is no exception.
Questions people ask us about this
Has Boutique Hotel Matlai won any awards?
Yes. TripAdvisor gave it a Travellers' Choice award in 2014, 2015 and every year from 2017 to 2023, with Best of the Best in 2022. It also held TripAdvisor's Certificate of Excellence in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, and won the Booking.com Traveller Review Award in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2026. All of them come from guest reviews.
Which years did Matlai win on Booking.com?
The Booking.com Traveller Review Award came in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024 and 2026. We list only the years we hold Booking.com's own notice for. Since we opened in 2012, our Booking.com guest score has always been between 9.7 and 10.0, according to our General Manager, Tim Hennig.
What is Boutique Hotel Matlai's TripAdvisor score?
4.9 out of 5 from 378+ reviews, checked in October 2026. TripAdvisor also showed the hotel ranked #1 of 8 hotels in Pingwe when we checked in August 2026.
What are Matlai's scores on Booking.com and Expedia?
9.7 out of 10 (“Exceptional”) from 53 reviews on Booking.com, and 10 out of 10 (“Exceptional”) from 47 reviews on Expedia, both checked in October 2026.
What is Matlai's Google rating?
4.8 out of 5 from 225 Google reviews, checked in October 2026.
Do these scores change?
Yes, constantly — new reviews arrive every week on every platform. Read each score as accurate on the month stated, not as a fixed fact, and follow the link if you want the number as it stands today.
Were any of the awards paid for?
No. Every award on this page comes from guest reviews. We did not pay for any of them and we did not enter any of them, and we never list an award that hotels pay to enter.
Has the hotel been featured in the press?
One item so far: TravelAwaits listed Matlai as number 7 of eight resorts on Zanzibar on 30 March 2022. We list press only with a link we have opened and checked. Journalists researching Zanzibar or Michamvi can write to [email protected].