An underwater hotel opens in Africa

Joining a list of other experimental under-the-sea hotel rooms in Florida, Sweden and the Maldives, the underwater room at Manta Resort on remote Pemba Island in Tanzania’s Zanzibar Archipelago immerses guests 4m below the surface. The room sits on the bottom of a three-level floating structure, located 250m from shore in the Indian Ocean.

Above and below each of the room’s eight windows, spotlights illuminate the sea life that swims by. Frequent visitors include a trumpet fish known as Nick, as well as squid and octopus at night. Above the underwater space, guests can climb a ladder to the water level, which contains a bathroom and lounge, or ascend to the rooftop to soak up the sun or lay beneath the stars.

The floating structure was designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, who also constructed the structurally similar Utter Inn in Sweden’s Lake Malaren. For this project, he sought a more remote location with clearer waters, and found it off Pemba’s coast in the form of “the blue hole”, a circular clearing within the coral reef, measuring about 50m in diameter.  The open space made it the ideal location to anchor the new underwater structure.

The room officially opened for guests on 1 November. Since Manta Resort has only one underwater space within the now 17-room resort, single nights in the room can be added to an existing stay for $1,500 per night.