Kairaba Hotel, Gambia

Summer holiday offers ( For 7 nights ) from 1st May to 31st of October 2010
	Euro	Sterling
1st adult	€ 735	£ 640
2nd adult	€ 450	£ 390
Child Policy
0 to 6 years stay free* in parents' room	Free	Free
7 to 12 years	€ 260	£ 225
13 to 16 years	€ 368	£ 320

Winter holiday offers ( For 7 nights ) from 1st November 2010 to 30th of April 2011
	Euro	Sterling
1st adult	€ 820	£ 710
2nd adult	€ 550	£ 475
Child Policy
0 to 6 years stay free* in parents' room	Free	Free
7 to 12 years	€ 320	£ 280
13 to 16 years	€ 410	£ 355

Review: The Kairaba Hotel is sleek and attentive but a little self-important. It is perhaps the most urbane of The Gambia's establishments. Spaciously self-contained in 15 acres of lawned slopes. The suave buff complex completed in 1990 by its Swedish architects and designers. It has the country's best known conference facilities and it has perforce to cater for numerous official functions. This - plus previously erratically efficient management, never-ending room renovations and frequent breakdowns of communication between the reception and reservations office - were the causes of its previous overbookings. Since 2004 however, this has considerably changed since it was acquired by M.A. Kharafi and Sons who introduced their own management style and upgraded room operations. The Kairaba is greatly insulated from the 'Senegambia Strip' outside by uniformed security-staff in a guardhouse beneath a grand portal. This was a new fixture added in 1999 to enclose a guarded car park and row of shops. From a second line of defence of Tropical Boutique, and Casa Fernando fish diner, the drive and covered walkway are lined by the cheaper, shower-only 'Avenue Rooms' and the colonnaded office blocks and the 6,460 square foot 'Jaama Hall' centre. The drive drops between the main buildings: the reception lounge large and chill to the right; the restaurants, bar and meeting rooms left. Here the Monsoon Bar and the main Kingfisher share a terrace that bright birds appreciate too. The Kingfisher shares its French chef with the á la carte Shikra adjoining, a plush place where holidaymakers hobnob with the VIPs attending. The neatly manicured lawns enclose 12 staggered room blocks. Two-storeyed and in a beige coloured wall are occupied by the presidential Mansa Suite, 2 executive suites also with kitchenette, and over 100 single or double premium, standard and downstairs studio rooms all with mod cons. Outside the gardens slope down past the croquet to the rather shapely, figure-of-eight pool, a central bridge demarcating the toddlers from the deep end. Nearby, the Malimbe is more casual than the main block's, and the circular thatched Bolong Bar is backed by gardens and tamarisk-hedged lawns that border the hotel's 300 metres of beach. A Vitala Studio beneath the reception is a German-run, the adjoining 'Health Care Studio' a lightly equipped gymnasium. The Observatory is more singularly impressive. It was installed in 1994 and is West Africa's largest telescope, a computerized 10" Meade programmed for 10,000 stars. Their are a wide range of different rooms and suites to cater for all tastes. All the rooms at the Kairaba Hotel offer an exceptionally high standard of comfort and overlook either the ocean or the immaculate landscape.