Royal Saly

This hotel is a treasure for those wanting to feel like they are in Senegal. It has a casual, friendly atmosphere where every member of the staff is there to help you and wants you to be comfortable. A shout out to Alfa, Amadou and Ibrahim. The beach is lovely, shaded by palm trees. The rooms are a good size, comfortable with good showers. The restaurant is open air with good food, quite a lot of variety and so many desserts every night. There is some type of entertainment most nights, one or a few musician/singers - a nice ambiance to the evening meal . The night of the Senegalese drummers was wonderful. Blocks of rooms are built around a number of mature baobab trees with flowering shrubs all around. There are so many birds here. The hotel is just off the main street of town with shops and restaurants nearby should you choose to go out.

I was really looking forward to this stay. I booked one off their most expensive rooms. One off the worst experience i have ever had in a hotel room. First they placed me all the way back. Basically not living by the beach at all like promised. The area is so huge. I asked them why, and they could not answer even i get this confirmed in my booking. The room reminded me off an ongoing renovation project. The safe and toilet did not work. The rooms are really filthy, when i lifted some things from the walls their was bird poop behind. Also under the bed so much dirt. I got sick on my second day their. I believe it was because off the food i got on the restaurant or just the fact that it`s so dirty in my room that something happened while staying there. I understand that in a country where French is the language you cannot expect them to speak anything else. But i kinda do when in comes to a place like this. They dont understand or speak any English. Impossible to communicate. Because they dont wanna try. So for everyone who dont speak French, do not use this hotel. The only thing that is ok with this place is the actual location. I might have gotten really unlucky with my room. But i doubt since i walked around looking and saw many off the same standard.

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