Balafon Beach Resort

We originally booked 2 weeks after reading reviews, price and location. We had an excellent stay. Firstly the staff are a credit to the hotel,from the reception staff to the gardeners, happy smiling faces everywhere. If u need anything just ask. The gardens and pool area is quiet and peaceful and is constantly being cleaned and tidied. The food was good but you can easily walk to the main ***** for a change of scenery and see how the locals go about there life. This is Gambia its not greece or Spain so don't expect the same. We just walked 10 mins from hotel several times for food and drinks and enjoyed the experience. We decided to stay another 10 days the manager showed us several other rooms but decided to stay put. We'll done Balafon

Balafon is an excellent hotel.  The rooms, the breakfast, the beach: everything is very good.  I like that Balafon has a Gambian owner.   From Balafon you can walk along the beach or across the street to Sengambia *****, where most of the restaurants are, in about fifteen minutes.  In the evening we took a taxi back for safety reasons.  That costs 200 dalasi. When we arrived we were assigned a room that did not look like the photos in the travel guide.  We objected and were then given the nicer room.  So pay close attention when checking in! We were in Balafon in March 2024 and the guests were almost all Dutch. And now the downside of hotel Balafon: the internet.  That's very bad.  We bought a SIM card from Africell, but that didn't really help.  The internet is so weak that you can never read the newspaper or look up something about a trip to Gambia.  Working from Balafon?  Better not try it!

We visited The Balafon for our honeymoon in Feb 2024. We stayed 10 nights in a Premium Ocean View Room on Bed & Breakfast . The location was perfect and we are booking to go back next January. Our stay was made perfect by Lamin Camara Assistant Restaurant Manager … Lamin ensured we had the most memorable honeymoon. We had breakfast in our room everyday and felt extremely welcome. Nothing was too much trouble for Lamin and his team. I’d like to mention Maamune, Fatou and Mam Kumba just a few of the restaurant team who looked after us during our stay. Because of these smiley friendly Gambian people we will look forward to staying with them again very soon

The rooms are oké. Our room was in de back near a ditch en Some trees. Al lot of birds and monkeys are there. Thats very Nice. But the smell from the ditch en de sewage was not fine. Sometimes it was very terrible. The room untherneath our room had a window at the bathroom just like every other bathroom, but you can see inside the bathroom if you pass on the stairs, so you see the other tourist while having a bath. The swimming pool had nothing to hold on to while gowing in and out. Thats not very secure. The swiiming pool is allways clean but you do not have tables to put your stuff. It is very Nice that the hotel is at the beach. Cleaning the side of the beach of the hotel is not what the hotel staf does. The beach is not very clean. The wifi is very very very bad. There was no TV. After complaining nothing changed. After complaining when checking out at the hotel did not even change anything. You pay for all those things. There is no compensation. For 11 Days we had bad wifi or no wifi, no tv and multiple times no water to shower. Its not really a problem if there is no water. This is not what we payd for!!!

Good hotel at a nice location. Friendly people. Very big rooms. Shower and bed not so comfortabele buy ok. Breakfeast is realy good and a lot of choises. Every Day music at night for entertainment. Close to the *****. You can walk to the *****. Dont take a massage at tge hotel. They are to extensieve (75 euro). You can do the best massage at senegambia hotel for only 1100 dalasi.

Very nice place. The staff both at reception and restaurant are very friendly and committed. I have been coming there for the past 3years and I enjoy staying with them. I feels like home always interacting with the staff. Management should continuously work on treating staff well and maintain them for people like me and my friends look forward to seeing the friendly staff again. Super place!

This is a very nice Beach Resort and the staff is great. Very friendly and courteous. Great food, the view of the sea, and the whole place is so beautiful. I will definitely be going back. I highly recommend it.

We have just returned from 2 weeks at Balafon, we normally stay at Djembe but as it was not open this season we decided to book Balafon. We have been going to The Gambia for many years and have stayed in different hotels so we are aware of what to expect. However Balafon was not what we expected, it isn't a 4 star,I would say a 3 at best. We were in room B17 near entrance from Djembe side, the room was a really good size although it was in much need of refurbishment, the furniture had definitely seen better days. We didn't have much of a view as there was a huge tree right outside our room, but we didn't ask to move as we don't spend much time in our room anyway. The shower was useless, I did report this and this was dealt with promptly, in fact a new shower was fitted which was much better. The majority of staff are wonderful, Suleiman who ran the restaurant was very efficient, as we're the waiting on staff including the lovely trainees on duty. A shout out to our room cleaner Sinny, always there with a smile in the mornings Breakfast was always good with lots of choice so no complaints here, we had a couple of meals/snacks whilst there which were slightly more expensive than outside hotel but were still good value and presented lovely. We enjoyed our stay at Balafon but do like Djembe so unsure if we will stay again. We ate out in the evening mainly at Justice Bar and Irie Africa, both fantastic. Justice has done a fantastic job setting up his new business, our new favourite restaurant in the area