Palm Beach Hotel

We have just come back from a fabulous stay at Palm Beach, had a really good time. It’s currently a bit shabby and run down, however, the current owners are leaving at the end of April. The new owners have great new plans and a building team ready to make a lot of improvements for when the hotel opens for the new season in November. So what’s good at the moment. The staff are truly amazing they do everything they can to make sure you have a good stay. They give a 5 star service. The hotel is on what is probably the best beach in The Gambia. The rooms are currently very shabby but spotlessly clean, very comfortable bed and pillows. The shower was excellent always plenty of hot water and the aircon was great at cooling the room down very quickly. The atmosphere around the pool is very friendly and we enjoyed the different bands playing every evening. So what’s not so good. Breakfast all the bad stories are true. We went next door to the beach cafe, pleasant 3 minute stroll on the beach. Food from the poolside bar was generally ok. The best thing on the menu is the Butter chicken, so good we had it three times. For those going next season I think there will be a lot of improvement in all the areas it needs to happen. The staff will remain the same and they are very excited about all the planned improvements. For those going this season if you’re not happy with breakfast go next door, the majority of guests do. Your room maybe shabby but it’s clean and comfortable. The pool is also clean. Remember this is Africa and hospitality industry really suffered loosing two years trade due to COVID. Many small hotels and restaurants did not survive and had to permanently close. The rest are trying to catch up on lost trade and revenue. You are not going to get European standards but you will get a very warm welcome and staff who will do whatever they can to make you happy. Would I go back? Most definitely yes. I think the new owners have some very exciting plans for this hotel.

We choose this place to stay for our last 5 days to spend in The Gambia after a one month stay. We decided to take a risk even though there were mixed reviews. The pull for the hotel was mostly due to the private beach, pool and breakfast that is included. Our expectations were not super high at all and we decided let's just go with the flow. On the day of check-in 2025-01-13, we asked the check in counter what time is breakfast, they answered "7.30-10.30", I thought wow that's nice it does not end super early. We woke up and walked to the breakfast and arrived at 10.01 and saw them removing everything from the counters and we thought to ourselves "what is going on I thought breakfast ends at 10.30" we quickly walk up to staff and ask the question and they reply "no, it ends at 10.00" . We were chocked and said "okay your front desk staff said another time, is there anything you can arrange for us in the back? They said "no", then I said okay that's too bad but the crepe ladies were kind enough to give us crepes only, however that is far from a breakfast we want and enough. After this experience as we were leaving breakfast we saw how staff was eating breakfast from newly fried eggs. We thought oh didn't they say the had no food? Anyway, we went to the front desk and asked if there is anything they can do. The lady manager there tried to talk to the breakfast staff but they insisted there is nothing they can do about it. To me I feel the hotel failed to accommodate us, due to a mistake they themselves had made by giving us the wrong time. Maybe we are simply not used to low star rating hotel but were in chock of the experience given our low expectations we already had, this was just too bad.

Not the nicest of hotels. Everything needs refurbished! Rooms have very much thin walls so you can hear everything, door lock very flimsy to the point where a hard push would break it, towels not replaced until 2nd last day despite us following instructions to leave them on the floor of if you wanted them replaced, they were just hung out to dry instead! Restaurant is OK, but on our last night we were overcharged with extra items added to the bill and when we pointed it out we were met with a challenging response and it took us a while to get the bill corrected with no apology! We didn't use the pool and weren't in the hotel grounds during the day so can't comment on that, but it was very loud at night, even though our room was as far away from the pool area as possible. The room was clean, but everything is just very, very dated. We only had breakfast one morning, but it wasn't great and we smelled like fried food for the rest of the day despite only having toast and being in for 5 minutes. Would not recommend.