We stayed at the hotel for 9 nights with our two young children and some friends who also had their kids with them. We found it a real mix - the setting was really beautiful - gorgeous beach, lovely pool and nice looking huts to stay in, but there were lots of annoying problems throughout the holiday. Firstly, the food looked pretty decent - but it tasted fairly average unfortunately. As the hotel is all inclusive, this left us feeling like we were a bit stuck for dinner (although we ended up going to another hotel to eat a couple of times for a bit of variation). The puddings in particular weren't great - they looked awesome, but often just didn't taste of very much. Secondly, dinner is from 8-10pm. Maybe this is fine for many guests from the Mediterranean, but it was really late for our kids (who are normally in bed by 8) and there was no flexibility offered and no way of ordering dinner early from the restaurant or something. That left us with ratty kids getting tired and staying up late, or going to bed hungry. Another annoyance was the very loud music being pumped out by the pool. The clientele when we were there were hardly 18-30 party animals - almost everyone either had kids or were in the older age bracket, so it didn't seem to fit and ruined the general feeling of peace on the beach and down by the sea. The loud music continued into the night with raucous drum performances every few nights and loud music and singing on others. That started at 10pm and went on for a couple of hours most nights, keeping us and the kids up even later. For families I would recommend asking to stay further away from the restaurant so this would be less of an issue. Also, although there weren't many mosquitoes visibly around, even in the evenings, we got bitten to death at night. There were no mosquito nets over the beds and I assume that they were getting in through the thatched roof as we weren't able to track them down and get rid of them. My little one got 50 bites over a couple of nights and I had a couple of dozen - even using DEET and trying to cover up at night. I could barely sleep with them buzzing in my ear and ended up wearing full length clothes all night to avoid getting savaged every night! Annoying not to have nets which would have immediately solved the problem and are standard in many other hotels we have traveled to around Africa. Some more positive things were the availability of taxis outside the hotel, who the hotel were able to call for you if you wanted. We went on a tour to the nearby Bandia Reserve which was pretty decent and the (quite grumpy) hotel events guy was able to arrange this easily. The staff were nice to the kids, although a bit rude and non-responsive to us which didn't make us feel particularly welcomed. Also for fellow Brits or other non-French speakers, the staff didn't speak much if any English (to be expected and we speak reasonable French so were able to get by). There was a bit of gentle harassment from sellers
41 Reviews