Royal Horizon Baobab

My wife and I stayed at this hotel for two weeks at the end of February / early March.

Let's start with the positives.
The weather was fantastic, the location of our room (which was on the beach) was great, the beach itself is clean and tidy and the gardens are maintained beautifully.

Now the negatives
The hotel guests are 90 percent French, all the signs (including the food) are French. All the information is in French. We have basic French language skills but this wasn't enough... there is virtually no English spoken even at reception. The staff (especially in the main restaurant) are lazy. For the evening meal the restaurant opens at 19:30 so you either need to go then with the queue and stampede for a table or wait until 21:00 when tables become free. The restaurant staff do not seem keen to clear tables and make them available again - this is mainly due to them not having a designated area to maintain so it ends up being nobodies responsibility to turn tables over. Dirty plates are not cleared during courses so you end up putting them on another table as piles of dirty plates accumulate. There is no coffee served at tables for breakfast instead you have to queue at the coffee machine! You can enjoy fresh orange juice if you want to spend 3 Euros for the privilege. The food for the evening meal is the same every day (no variety) - what you see on day-one will be the same every day. By 21:00 the food is not being replenished so the choice decreases; when we queried this we were told "it's fini"... the restaurant doesn't close until 22:30 ??

The rooms are supposedly cleaned everyday but if you were to take a cloth and have quick wipe around it would be black. There is mould in the shower area , the toilet "room" is so small you have squeeze yourself into it , close the door and the you can use the loo. Whilst there is a sink in that room, there is no towel? We took the "throw" off the bed at it looked like it haven't been cleaned or wash ever. On one day we were not provided with fresh towels and had to contact reception twice (again no English) to request them... they arrived two hours later at 20:00. There isn't enough space in the room for your clothes for two weeks for two people.

There are two or three designated areas for swimming in the sea, the rest are "out of bounds", I think this is because of the tidal current and there are huge boulders making the sea approach from the beach look unattractive.

The all-inclusive package does not include all the drinks. It was hard to work out what you had to pay for and what you didn't.... for example Bailys and Malibu were not part of the package and you would have to pay for these. There was no list of what was in and what was out.

We are both non-smokers and we actively seek the non-smoking areas. This is a complete waste of time as there is flagrant breach of the non-smoking signs everywhere including... somewhat unbelievably, the restaurant were vaping occurred openly and freely without challenge despite the non-smoking signs. There was non enforcement by the staff leading to awkward confrontation between guests who do not like having cigarette smoke blow over their table whilst eating

L’enthousiasme du personnel et leur gentillesse

Very tasty fresh food, clean surroundings, friendly and helpful staff.

Mistakes happen but fraud is not good. Went to pay the tourist tax with cash and reception took 180% before we questioned it and then got 80% back and luckily had the receipt. When we left the good receptionist when we double checked the tax system had to think for a while before we got it all back! I blaim Tui for a rubbish website giving tourists the wrong informnation!! Tax is approx 20 euros but it is not for Tui customers to pay it!

Le positionnement sur la plage
La qualité du restaurant
Les 2 piscines
Les chambres toutes avec vues vers le soleil couchant
Les animateurs très compétants
Les femmes d’entretien des chambres de grande qualité et régulière
Les spectacles du soir et différentes animations dans la journée pour les enfants

Le jardin est magnifique et entretenu au quotidien par des jardiniers motivés.
Le personnel est très serviable et d'une grande gentillesse.
Les chambres rénovées sont confortables. La restauration est appréciable. l'hôtel est magnifiquement situé.

L'endroit est idéal pour des vacances en famille et très bon niveau d'animation.

Very nice hotel although the rooms are very spread out due to the sheer size of the property. We requested a room change as my wife has issues with walking and after some initial messing about the Hotel Manager arranged a much better room for us. The main thing to be aware of (for UK visitors) is that very little English is spoken by most of the staff, so all the entertainment, food labelling, menus etc are all in just French and 98% of the guests are French. It would have been useful to have been notified of this by TUI beforehand so that we were aware. Looking at TripAdvisor reviews they are automatically translated into English so we did not pick this up beforehand. As they say in England, C'Est La Vie.. The food quality was excellent, and the staff very friendly. The rep covering our hotel (Tarik from TUI) was very helpful. We went on trips to Bandia reserve (excellent) and also to the Saloum Delta / local markets / local village (good but a long day). However one point to note, the person who was recommended to us to provide a local boat trip on the lakes immediately next to the hotel (Zizzou) turned out to be not a very pleasant character at all. We went out on the lake instead with Abba who we bumped into on the beach, who spoke excellent English and took us out for a very good price.

Emplacement et cadre

The Staff were available and caring, attending to any needs

L'emplacement de l'hôtel, le personnel, le site.
L'ambiance générale pour son authenticité et son empreinte africaine contrairement à de nouveaux hôtels "trop béton"
Mais attention à la baisse de qualité indéniable depuis qqs années. Ceci peut impliquer que les "revenants" ou les habitués décident de changer quand même d'hôtel.

Emplacement ideal
Personnel au top